r/SurePetcare

So we have a kitten who we feed kitten food, and a 1 year old who eats adult food and is already slightly overweight. We got a single SureFeed microchip feeder to stop the adult from eating the kitten food and gaining more weight. One problem I was having was that even though we got the back cover for the feeder, the adult cat could still eat the kitten food from the front by sticking her neck by and eating alongside the kitten.

My initial thought to fix this was just enabling Intruder mode via setting the switch to setting II and enabling the solid orange custom mode for Intruder Mode. I thought this worked initially but for some reason there would be many times it didn’t activate at all and still let the adult cat eat as much as she wanted of the kitten food.

Apparently these feeders have proximity sensors on the inside that prevent the lid from closing if a cat is within range of those sensors, even if Intruder Mode is activated. I found a post online talking about Forced Lid Closed Mode which basically disables the proximity sensors. This fixed the entire problem. By enabling both of these custom modes, the lid consistently closes every time the adult tries to sneak past and eat the kitten food.

I don’t understand what kind of design flaw this is but it was obviously not thought out, and the documentation about the custom modes is so inaccessible. This documentation should be easily accessible public information on the website or via the instructions sheet that came with the feeder.

The steps I took to activate these modes are:

1. Clear all previous custom modes (if any are enabled): Set bottom switch to Setting I, cycle custom modes until you see Flashing Red & Green, press Open button to clear all custom modes.
2. Enable Intruder Mode: Set bottom switch to Setting II, cycle custom modes until you see Solid Orange, press Open button to save.
3. Enable Forced Lid Closed Mode: Set bottom switch to Setting III, cycle custom modes until you see Solid Green, press Open button to save.
4. Set bottom switch back to Setting I to re-enable fast lid closing.

I have multiple SurePet products for my Bengal cat, using the hub to connect them all. I just wanted to warn you that once your warranty of 3 years runs out, you are stuck if you encounter any problems with your products. My cat flap has drained batteries within 7-10 days for the last 2 months. I finally contacted their customer service team after attempting their fixes from their support pages. Even though the issue is known and SurePet acknowledged the issue as a hardware fault from their end, they were unwilling to help in anyway. What are cat parents meant to do? Leave a hole on the door/window/wall? Of course we have to end up replacing it at our own cost. I was offered a measly 10% off, which doesn’t even cover the extra costs of buying batteries that should last at least 6 months. Extremely disappointing service from what I thought was a well reputable company. You always learn whether a company is highly regarded or not by their humility and goodwill gestures when called upon. You invest into the ecosystem, which isn’t cheap at all. When it fails, you are left to pump more money into it. I am moving homes soon and will slowly transition away from SurePet.

I have had these feeders for my four cats for the last few years. Yesterday out of the blue I noticed that one cat’s feeder (which is just shy of 4 years old) was abnormally slow to open - I would have to press the button a few times before the lid would finally open. Then last night I noticed my cat sort of scratching at it to try and get to his food because the feeder was not opening. I hit the button, nothing (no motor noise at all). Lights still worked when I tried to factory reset, but again, no lid movement or motor noise and the feeder was no longer showing as a device/connected to the hub. I changed the batteries, cleaned the whole thing and tried everything again, still nothing so I assume the motor has just completely died.

I thankfully happened to have an extra feeder on hand as I’d bought one for a long-term foster cat who has since been adopted, so I was able to get that set up for my cat without much disruption to him. But now I’m paranoid about the other feeders dying and wondering if I need to shell out yet another $250 to have another backup on hand. Is this just the lifespan for these things? I’m not really mechanically inclined so replacing/rewiring the motor is probably not feasible even if that’s a possibility.