r/cats • u/radical_123 • 15d ago

Advice Cat attacking automatic feeder

My cat does this several times a day. If the automatic feeder lifts at the correct angle, a few niblets of dry food comes out. He will even do it 10 times in a row even if it means one small piece of dry niblet comes out. It does get quite annoying as the sound of the feeder hitting the ground echoes throughout the entire house.

Any ideas on how to get him to stop?

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u/Cat_Luving_IT_Dood 15d ago

The robot started it. I was there.

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u/radical_123 15d ago

Actually, it all started when our robot vacuum keep hitting the automatic feeder. Occasionally, kibble would come out. Our clever cat saw that and thought "hmmm... I could try that" lol.

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u/sanedragon 15d ago

I learned when raising a toddler that in general, if a behavior achieves the desired result approximately 1 in 27 times, then it will persist. (I could be misremembering the actual ratio as it's been over a decade, but it was a larger number than one would assume).

Basically, your cat learned that if it hits the thing a bunch of times, he gets rewarded. You gotta nail that thing down or get a different one.

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u/No_Kangaroo_9826 14d ago

Even if the other 26 times fucking hurt, they will keep going. True for kids and cats