How the PETLIBRO Camera Feeder Ended Our 5 AM Meal Demands

Juniper is nine years old, ten pounds, gray from nose to tail, and she has a clock in her head set to the wrong time. Five in the morning, every morning, she planted herself at the foot of our bed and yowled. Not a polite meow. A long rising complaint with a pause in the middle, as though she were giving me one more chance to correct myself. Biscuit, our beagle mix, slept through all of it. Neil slept through most of it. I did not. For four years I got up, walked to the kitchen, and scooped her breakfast out of the bag with a measuring cup, because it was faster than listening to her. What finally ended it was a PETLIBRO automatic feeder with a camera in it, and I will get to that. First you need to know how thoroughly I lost.

What changed was not the cat. What changed was me. I spent twenty-six years as an IT coordinator for the school district, then retired, then in the first week of March this year took a part time job at the public library here in Duluth, three days a week, Tuesday through Thursday. The house went empty for the first time since we adopted Biscuit four years ago. Juniper noticed inside the first week. The yowling moved earlier. By the end of March she was starting at four forty-five, on the theory that if five o'clock did not work, four forty-five might.

It took me a while to see what I had done. She was not hungry at five in the morning. Cats are not stupid. She had trained me, patiently, over four years, and I had paid out every single time. I was not feeding a cat. I was answering an alarm I had installed myself, and the alarm kept moving earlier because I kept answering it.

So in that same first week of March I bought the PETLIBRO feeder with my own money and set it up in the home office. That is the spare bedroom, and there is a pet gate in the office doorway with a small cat door cut into it, so Juniper can pass and Biscuit cannot. The feeder sits behind that gate, on the floor, where a thirty-one pound beagle cannot reach it. Biscuit eats by hand in the kitchen, from a bowl, fed by me or by Neil, and he has never once eaten out of the feeder. That was the plan from day one and it has held for eight months.

Setup was the usual. Plug in the DC adapter, put the app on my iPhone, join it to my home network, follow the prompts. My router is a single 2.4GHz unit and the office is one wall away, so I had no trouble. I will be honest about my bias: I read the manual. Twenty-six years of fixing other people's Wi-Fi does that to a person. The manual was clear. The app is decent and not wonderful, which I will get to.

She had trained me over four years, and I paid out every single time.

Here is what actually happened. First meal is set for 6:30 AM. Not five. I picked 6:30 on purpose, because it is a time I can keep for years rather than a time that buys me two quiet weeks. The first week she still yowled at five. She yowled at the bedroom door, then at the gate, then at the ceiling. I did not get up. That is the part nobody mentions: the machine only works if you stop answering the old alarm. By the end of the second week the five o'clock yowling was gone. Not quieter. Gone. She now sits in front of the feeder about ten minutes early and stares at it, which is somehow more polite than staring at me.

The camera gets more use than I expected. It is 1080P with night vision and a 145 degree view, and on my library days I open the app at lunch and watch her eat. There is two way audio, so I can talk to her through the speaker, and I recorded a short meal call in my own voice that plays when the food drops. I will not pretend she is moved by the sentiment. She is moved by the food. But it is nice to hear the house.

What annoys me: it is corded, a DC power supply, so an outlet decides where it lives. It is dry food only, fine for Juniper and a dealbreaker for a cat on wet food. It measures 13.78 by 12.99 by 7.48 inches and weighs 4.7 pounds, and with five liters of kibble in the bin it is not a thing you relocate on a whim. The app logs me out for no reason I can see, maybe once a month. And the bin is big enough that I fill it every couple of weeks, which is genuinely convenient and also means refilling is not a habit, so I have to remind myself to check it.

The honest limit has nothing to do with hardware. Juniper's five o'clock noise was about food, and food is a problem a feeder can solve. Some cats yowl because the house is empty or because they want company, and no appliance fixes that. If your cat is crying at the door at five in the morning because she wants you, a scheduled meal will feed her at 6:30 and she will still cry at the door at five.

Eight months in, the feeder has not jammed, the app has not lost the schedule, and I have not scooped kibble with a measuring cup before sunrise since March. That is the review, really.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If we were sitting at my kitchen table, I would tell you to buy the PETLIBRO feeder for the schedule, not the camera. The camera is what makes it pleasant. The schedule is what made the difference. Pick a meal time you can defend on a bad morning, set it once, and then leave it alone. Do not creep it earlier to buy yourself a lie-in, because that is exactly how the four forty-five problem started in my house.

And I would tell you the boring part. The first week is the price of admission. The machine feeds the cat. You are the one who has to stop getting out of bed.