I figured I'd come here first, even before consulting the interwebs.
There's a slim chance I'll be (get) lucky and have the opportunity to spend a couple days away from home once in a while.
My 7.8 year old kitty eats only soft food with some crunchy dental treats thrown in. So, she might consider hard food a treat, or a change in pace anyway.
While I haven't searched yet, there must be automatic hard food dispensers. I wonder if there's such a thing as soft food dispensers?
If so, they'd probably be as expensive as some of the espresso machines I've seen discussed here, lol.
As far as 'strategy', maybe a skipped meal would cause her to appreciate me more, but really, she is a very good cat as it is.
I'm somewhat in the 'sticks', I guess you could say, and don't know the neighbors enough to prevail upon them to feed the kitty. Friends are farther away. Plus, it'd only be for a couple days at a time, but potentially regularly.
If your options stretch into the stratosphere, happy to spend the feline miles to visit your fine part of the world to scoop the delicious salmon / tuna out for your feline friend.... but it may need to fit in with some of the project we have at work..... will that be a problem....
On a serious note (I wasn't suggesting I could actually look after your cat ), my sister and I have been spending more time than not away from our homes in recent months, including a feline companion. While he (the cat) did not like the first, second and maybe the third trip in the car, he seems to have become somewhat used to them, and settles in better than he did on the first instance. If you have any option (apart from the K's of miles to my place ), then it could be worth exploring...
There could be a dog involved. Again, purely conjecture at this point, but I haven't thought of a strategy before of leaving the cat for a couple days.
In the past I've hired a cat sitter, for other cats, for vacations. This one spent a week in a kennel, along with dogs. She didn't seem overly traumatized, but I wouldn't want to put her through that again, if I could help it. But again, it'd be, potentially, only a couple days.
Makes sense to look for options that are gentler on the animal, For a couple of days, it's likely easier to let them fend for themselves without the stress of a new environment and/or new people to contend with, but beyond that length of time, it is often worth the time to find a situation they are somewhat comfortable with just so they have "someone" to keep an eye on them, and provide some more personal care. My sister's cat was quite pensive and not wanting to engage, particularly with Men, but given time he has become quite comfortable with me. I guess I'm trying to say that given time with the same person, yours may also find their comfort zone with someone you both trust.
Well, I've started to look.
They exist, and won't break the bank.
Ice packs and potentially pre-freezing could be involved in the one below.
Again, just started looking, so there is a possible solution out there.
The one that actually exists.
I signed up for the other one.
It's sitting in my car trunk right now, along with a cheap pellet dispenser for treats.
Not looking forward to experimenting on the kitty, but it would be nice, at least in theory, to head off for a day or two. If I pursue it, it'll be baby steps.
The one that exists does two refrigerated servings; there's a third tray that is not refrigerated. So, low capacity.
The vaporware model has huge capacity. But how long can you leave the poor cat without human interaction, anyway?
Then, there's the litterbox...... Yes, I know, they have robots for that too.
Yes, this is another good point for the soft food dispenser.
Our cat wakes my wife (never myself) near every day around 6am.
Could you please provide a link to this huge capacity model?
I did not find anything bigger capacity than this Petlibro model mentioned above.
Or this huge capacity dispenser is for the dry cat food?
(I already have one for the dry food).
), my sister and I have been spending more time than not away from our homes in recent months, including a feline companion. While he (the cat) did not like the first, second and maybe the third trip in the car, he seems to have become somewhat used to them, and settles in better than he did on the first instance. If you have any option (apart from the K's of miles to my place 
