A Verge editor recounts how becoming a parent in 2024 made it harder to keep up with the four-times-daily feeding ritual required by her two cats, who despite being siblings cannot stand each other. Rather than researching extensively for the "perfect" product, as she and her husband had done for baby gear, they opted for a quicker, cheaper approach to automated pet feeders, ultimately finding a solution that mostly worked despite ongoing feline drama.

The cats' incompatible temperaments complicated the search: one is a food-obsessed bully who overeats, while his tortoiseshell sister eats anxiously and needs distance from him, ruling out feeders designed for multiple cats in one location. After testing four machines costing a few hundred dollars in total, the author settled on a roughly $90 PetSafe programmable feeder, chosen partly because reviews described it as sturdy and "raccoon-resistant," even though the cats never go outdoors. Two of these simple, app-free feeders successfully restored consistent mealtimes, though the author notes technology cannot fully resolve the cats' underlying animosity.