Short answer: most adult cats do best on three to four small scheduled meals a day rather than one or two large ones. Set the feeder to your cat existing meal times first, keep the total daily amount identical to what you feed now, and change nothing else for the first week. Adjust portions only after the routine is established.
How many meals a day?
Cats are built to eat little and often. In the wild a cat eats numerous small prey animals across a day, not two big servings. Splitting the same daily quantity across three or four feeds is closer to natural behaviour, reduces begging, and often reduces the vomiting that comes from eating a large bowl too quickly.
A common schedule is early morning, midday, early evening and late night. The late night portion is the one that stops the 5am wake up, because a cat that has eaten at 11pm is far less likely to demand breakfast before dawn.
How much per portion?
Start from what your cat eats now, not from the chart on the bag. Weigh the total daily dry food you currently give, then divide by the number of scheduled meals.
If you are starting from scratch, the feeding guide on your food is a reasonable baseline, adjusted for whether your cat is neutered, indoor only, or overweight. Indoor neutered cats, which describes most cats in Dubai apartments, need noticeably less than the guideline for an active outdoor cat. Check with your vet if weight is a concern.
One warning: automatic feeders make overfeeding easy, because portions feel small individually. Track the daily total, not the per meal amount.
Moving a cat onto a feeder without drama
- Set it up in the same spot as the current bowl, and leave it switched off for a day or two so the cat can investigate it.
- Match existing times exactly for the first week. Do not change food, times and delivery method all at once.
- Be present for the first few dispenses. The motor noise startles some cats. Being nearby the first time turns it into a positive association.
- Then shift times gradually, fifteen to twenty minutes per day, if you want a different schedule.
- Keep water separate from the feeder. Cats generally prefer to drink away from where they eat.
Multi cat households
Scheduled feeding works well when one cat bullies another off the bowl, because food arrives predictably rather than being available all day. If one cat eats both portions, you will need separate feeders in separate rooms, or a microchip feeder. A camera helps here, because it shows you which cat is actually eating.
What an automatic feeder cannot do
- Wet food is not suitable for standard dispensers, and spoils quickly at UAE room temperature.
- It cannot check on health. Appetite loss is one of the earliest signs of illness in cats, so you still need to notice whether food is being eaten.
- It does not replace a person for litter, water changes and welfare checks on longer trips.
Why a camera matters more than people expect
A feeder that dispenses is useful. A feeder that shows you the food came out and the cat came to eat it is a different thing entirely, because the failure modes of automatic feeders are silent. A jam, an empty hopper or a cat that has stopped eating all look identical from a distance. Seeing the bowl removes the guesswork.
PawCast
PawCast handles scheduled portions through the app, manual feeding on demand, and live video with two way audio so you can check the bowl and call your cat over. It runs on iOS and Android, and KANU offers assisted setup at delivery so the Wi-Fi pairing is done before the team leaves.
PawCast is 159 AED at the current offer price, reduced from 350 AED, with free delivery anywhere in the UAE within 4 to 5 working days. Details at kanu.ae/products/paw-cast-feeder.