Why didn't I do this years ago??

As Lou has gotten older and has had issues with thyroid and kidney disease he has needed frequent meals of canned cat food.  It has made going away on vacation a stressful proposition for the both of us.  I can't expect a pet sitter to come by the house 4-6 times a day and so I worry about Lou getting enough to eat.  Even a few weeks ago I left for Foxwoods at 7am and didn't return until 9pm.  He was fine but I felt bad leaving him without food for so long.

The more immediate concern is that he has suddenly stopped being able to make it through the night without a snack.  He eats about 9pm and then again about 6am.  Lately he has started yelling at the top of his lungs starting around 2am and it continues until I get up to take care of him.  My mother said "what about one of those automatic feeders?".  Well, call me stupid but why had I never thought to try it?  I suppose I thought that they were a gimmick that wouldn't work. But really anything was worth a try.

I did my usual research on Amazon and found this:

Pet feeder


The night I received it I decided to try it out without the timer just to see Lou's reaction to it.  Here he is hungry waiting for food and the feeder is in the background with the feeder doors shut:

And here he is with the door open.  It's food, he's eating, not a big deal to him:

It's really easy to take the trays out to clean them.  There is also a blue ice pack that sits in the bottom to help keep the wet food fresh.  It has two feeding trays and each has it's own timer.  You can set each to go off from 1-48 hours in the future.

 

The past couple of nights I have set one time for a 1:30 am feeding and since it's the weekend I've set the other one for about 5:30 am so that I can sleep in.  It has been a dream.  He has still been coming up to get me out of bed but it's much later, he isn't screaming and we are both much happier and more content!  I hope it keeps up!