Cats and dogs are missing meals after a popular smart feeder went down
A Petlibro service outage has stopped some connected pet devices from completing scheduled tasks, including dispensing food, raising concerns for owners who are away from home. The incident highlights the risk of relying on cloud-connected household devices for essential pet care when services fail.
The outage began on Tuesday and affected smart feeders, water fountains and litter boxes, while some users also reported problems with the Petlibro app. Although Petlibro said locally stored schedules should continue working and reported that much of the service had been restored by Wednesday afternoon, users said some RFID and Granary feeders still missed meals and some devices could not reconnect.
- Petlibro outage caused some smart feeders to miss scheduled meals.
- Water fountains and litter boxes were also reportedly affected.
- Service was partly restored, but some users still had problems.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Connected pet-care devices can offer real benefits, such as reliable routines, remote monitoring and practical help for owners with demanding schedules or limited mobility. Advocates argue that locally stored schedules and manual fallbacks can make them a useful supplement to attentive care, while service providers can improve resilience through clearer offline operation, redundancy and rapid incident support.
The case against
Critics argue that feeding, water and sanitation are essential needs that should not depend on a cloud service whose failure can leave animals without timely care. They contend that remote convenience is outweighed by the risk of opaque outages and reconnection problems, and that owners should retain simple independent feeding arrangements while manufacturers design essential functions to work fully offline.