The 5 Best Automatic Pet Feeders of 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Mel Plaut

Mel Plaut is a writer covering pets. They have tested hundreds of products for our best animal friends, including dog beds and pet fountains.

If you’ve ever had your pet wake you out of a dead sleep begging for food, you might understand the appeal of an automatic feeder.

These machines can feed your pet at inconvenient moments, and they can play other roles, too: portion manager, midday snack provider, kibble guardian.

Unfortunately, most of these machines aren’t great at their job.

We waded through dozens of models and got elbow-deep in kibble to find five good programmable pet feeders. There’s a chance that your cat will still haunt you in the night or your dog will still snuffle you awake at 6 a.m. on a Saturday. But at least you tried.

This feeder offers great portion accuracy, and its companion app makes programming mealtimes a breeze. But it’s expensive, and the built-in camera catches more action than you might want.

If you’re trying an auto pet feeder for the first time, this basic model is low risk. It outperforms models in the same price range, but it doesn’t come with any extra features.

This carousel feeder delivers the portions you put in it, reliably serving up to six meals a day. It’s one of the easiest to clean, but you can only schedule meals in 15-minute increments.

You can control this feeder with a simple app, and it’s a fraction of the cost of our main pick. But you lose some features and get less-accurate portions.

This is the only wireless feeder we’ve found that uses a built-in rechargeable battery, so you can put it anywhere you want. But it’s easier for a pet to break into than our other picks.

This feeder offers great portion accuracy, and its companion app makes programming mealtimes a breeze. But it’s expensive, and the built-in camera catches more action than you might want.

Of all the models we tested, the Petlibro Granary Smart Camera Feeder dispensed the most accurate portions, for both large and small kibble sizes. The Petlibro app makes programming meals and portions easy. And with the camera pointed down toward the bowl, it lets you monitor your pet and their feeding habits, so you can see how much (or whether) they’ve eaten. This kind of surveillance can catch things on camera other than your pet eating, and it isn’t necessary for the feeder to function. If you want something similar but less expensive, Petlibro also has a Wi-Fi–enabled Granary model without the camera.

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If you’re trying an auto pet feeder for the first time, this basic model is low risk. It outperforms models in the same price range, but it doesn’t come with any extra features.

The PitPet Smart Automatic Cat Feeder is a simple model that does a great job of feeding your animal on a programmed schedule, so it’s a good choice if you want to test whether your pet will like an automatic feeder. It has a physical control panel that’s the best of feeders this price range, so you can set up your program with only minimal frustration, and the LCD screen is relatively easy to read. And considering this model’s price, its portion control is also decent.

This carousel feeder delivers the portions you put in it, reliably serving up to six meals a day. It’s one of the easiest to clean, but you can only schedule meals in 15-minute increments.

The PetSafe 6 Meal Pet Feeder is a tray feeder that puts the portion control back in your hands, allowing you to measure out your pet’s portions yourself and add them to the six slots of the rotating carousel. Of all the feeders we tested, this one was the easiest to clean—it has just three removable pieces, and two of them (the bowl and the carousel) can go in the dishwasher. But you’re limited to programming it in 15-minute increments, and it runs on battery power only.

You can control this feeder with a simple app, and it’s a fraction of the cost of our main pick. But you lose some features and get less-accurate portions.

If you like the idea of programming and controlling your feeder with an app, but you don’t want to spend Granary-level money, the Papifeed Smart Automatic Cat Feeder is a great option. The Papifeed’s app has a simple, straightforward interface, so it’s easy to set up your pet’s meal schedule, adjust portions, and review usage history. But it doesn’t have the same portion accuracy as the Granary feeder, and it uses a third-party app.

This is the only wireless feeder we’ve found that uses a built-in rechargeable battery, so you can put it anywhere you want. But it’s easier for a pet to break into than our other picks.

The Petlibro Air Smart Feeder can be powered through a wall outlet or by using its built-in rechargeable battery, so you can put it wherever you need it. It’s easy to take apart for cleaning, and, like the Granary, the Air can be programmed through Petlibro’s straightforward app. It also has seals on the lid and over the dispenser chute, to help keep food from going stale. But this feeder is vulnerable to break-ins from crime-prone animals.

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As a Wirecutter staff writer covering pets, I’ve conducted extensive firsthand testing on dog beds, cat litter boxes, pet carriers, and hundreds of other products for our best animal friends.

For this guide:

Automatic pet feeders can be helpful in a few distinct scenarios for people with cats and small dogs. (You could use them for large dogs, too, but most of the better models out there have bowls that are too small to accommodate their diets.)

For the most part, though, we found the performance of even the best feeders to be underwhelming. So we advise that you keep your expectations low.

If you need help with portioning: As it turns out, humans are pretty bad at measuring kibble. “There’s a margin of error of about 25% above or below a cup” when people attempt to scoop up what they think is a cup, according to veterinary nutritionist Lisa Weeth. Depending on the model, an automatic feeder might be more accurate. This is especially helpful “for animals that need to go on a diet or where we need to control what they're eating a little bit more,” said Amy Nichelason, a veterinarian and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Part of the problem with measuring ourselves is that “some of the food condenses and changes shape and it confuses us,” Nichelason told us. And for volume measurements like cups and spoons, the density of the material can lead to big discrepancies. Automatic feeders can remove some—but not all—of this variability. If you really need accurate portions, both Nichelason and Weeth recommend weighing your pet’s meals on a kitchen scale.

If you need flexibility and the convenience of scheduling multiple meals: Automatic feeders can provide flexibility in the timing and number of meals. Cats are “opportunistic hunters, and they would naturally eat several small meals a day,” said Mikal Delgado, a cat behavior consultant. Delgado recommends that people “try to feed their cats at least five times a day, if that’s possible.” But each cat is different, so yours may be fine with less-frequent feeding. An automatic feeder can dispense the number of meals that’s best for your cat, which is especially helpful when you’re out during mealtimes or at work.

Dogs can also benefit from this flexibility. A small programmed snack or meal while you’re out at work can break up the monotony of a dog’s time alone, according to Nichelason.

But even though these machines can be helpful when you’re out for the day, they’re not good pet sitters when you go on vacation. Multiple experts we’ve spoken with over the years have warned against leaving dogs and cats alone for prolonged periods of time, whether they’re being fed by a robot or not.

“A lot of these products are marketed with this idea that you can just leave your cat alone for several days,” Delgado told us. But “no cat should be left alone for more than 24 hours. And to me, that’s even a little bit long,” she explained. Dogs also need social interaction as well as access to a place for their bathroom activities. “With any type of technology, I like to say pet tech, not pet neglect,” Delgado said.

If you just need a good night’s sleep: Does your pet regularly wake you up for a midnight snack or a too-early breakfast? An automatic pet feeder might help. You can program it to dole out food at whatever ridiculously inconvenient time your stubborn pet has decided is best.

“If you have a household where the dogs are really persistent, or the cat is waking you up at 3 a.m. because their food bowl is empty, separating the person from the act of feeding can actually improve everyone’s mental well-being,” Weeth said. By breaking your pet’s association between you and food, they might (might being the key word here) let you sleep through the night.

If you need to prevent food theft in a multi-pet home: When you have more than one pet, it can be hard to stop kibble burglary. RFID or microchip feeders may help with that because they make food available only after reading a signal on the authorized pet’s microchip or RFID-enabled collar tag. These models were beyond the scope of this guide (for now), so we didn’t test them. But if you’re looking for this functionality, several vets we spoke to mentioned the SureFeed model as a good option.

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For this guide, we considered 24 options and tested 12. We kept our focus on programmable hopper models and tray models. Hopper feeders hold dry kibble in a container like a grain silo, dispensing a premeasured amount of food through a hole near the bottom, while tray models rotate to expose the next human-measured meal. We excluded analog hopper feeders that rely on gravity to keep the bowl full of kibble at all times, since they don’t allow you to program discrete meals or set portions. We plan to test wet-food tray feeders in a future update.

The feeders we tested could all deliver multiple meals throughout the day, and they allowed users to adjust the portions dispensed. We also considered feeders that had extra features, such as Wi-Fi–connected apps and built-in cameras.

Many modern pet feeders also include the option to play a recording of your own voice during mealtimes. We didn’t prioritize this feature because not all pets will appreciate it, and if a pet hears your disembodied voice, it “could be potentially confusing and stressful,” Delgado told us.

We did not consider RFID or microchip feeders for this update because they require an entirely different testing methodology than non-microchip models. And we also excluded dual-bowl feeders marketed toward multi-pet homes. Cats, in particular, are “not family style eaters, meaning they don’t naturally eat together. They hunt very small prey and they don’t share them,” Delgado said. She recommends having one feeder (or bowl) per cat and keeping them in separate locations, “so that we’re not forcing cats to unnaturally eat side by side.”

We tested a dozen feeders using two sizes of kibble—small, 5-by-5-mm cat food and average-size, 14-by-9.5-mm dog food. We followed each feeder’s guidelines on the maximum and minimum kibble sizes the machine would accept.

We focused on the following criteria:

Portion accuracy: We tested the accuracy of the portions for each feeder more than a dozen times, performing roughly 200 tests. Using large and small kibble, we weighed multiple portions on a kitchen scale and determined the percentage difference from the feeder’s stated portions. This required some math and, in some cases, some complicated conversions from volume measurements (cups, tablespoons) to weight (grams). None of the feeders delivered perfect portions at all times, so we looked for those that came the closest, and we disqualified any that were off by more than 25%. And because dry pet food comes in varying shapes and densities, you’ll likely need to test for yourself initially to make sure the portioning is accurate, regardless of which feeder you buy.

Ease of programming: We programmed each feeder to deliver five meals a day, using a variety of portion sizes, and we evaluated how easy it was to navigate through the control panel menu or app interface (if available). We also tested how easy it was to manually trigger an off-schedule feeding.

Physical security: In our attempts to challenge each feeder’s physical security, we tried to channel the most thievish of pets. We used our fingers, as well as a long, narrow, paw-like spoon, to try to manipulate kibble out of the dispenser holes. We batted at each feeder to try to knock it over, and we pretended not to have opposable thumbs as we tried to dislodge the lids. We also evaluated the efficacy of control panel lock/unlock buttons, if any were present.

Ease of setup and cleaning: We followed the instructions, or what there was of them, to set up each feeder when we received it. We then dismantled each one several times for cleaning, taking note of how easy or hard it was to reach all of the nooks and crannies, as well as how long cleaning took in the sink using a soapy sponge.

Quality of construction: We looked at each feeder’s architecture and noted whether the lids had a seal that might help keep food fresh and send bugs packing. We also sent dozens of portions of kibble through each feeder, to test whether any would jam at both high and low food levels (none did).

Battery backup operation: We set up multiple feedings and then disconnected each model from the wall outlet to see whether it would continue to dispense food on schedule using just battery backup power. They all performed well in this test, but that doesn’t mean they won’t fail under different conditions, such as with older batteries. None of the feeders came with batteries included, except the Petlibro Air, which has a rechargeable battery built in.

App interface and camera quality (if present): We noted how intuitive and easy it was to navigate each app and camera interface. We also programmed three meals on each app-enabled feeder, and then we turned off our internet router, to see whether the feeders stuck to their programs with no Wi-Fi signal. Finally, we asked senior staff writer Max Eddy, Wirecutter’s privacy and security expert, to look through each company’s privacy policy, to get a sense of any potential digital security risks.

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This feeder offers great portion accuracy, and its companion app makes programming mealtimes a breeze. But it’s expensive, and the built-in camera catches more action than you might want.

Of all the feeders we tested, the Petlibro Granary Smart Camera Feeder had the best portion control for both large and small kibble sizes. It was also one of the easiest to program, owing to Petlibro’s Wi-Fi–enabled app. It comes with a built-in camera, so you can spy on your animal when they eat and see how much food they may have left behind. But a camera isn’t necessary for the feeder to work well, and it adds to the cost. If you don’t need to eavesdrop during mealtime, Petlibro’s Granary Smart Feeder is less expensive and has nearly identical functionality, minus the camera.

It has good portion control for both small and large kibble sizes. Of all the feeders we tested, the Granary Smart Camera Feeder delivered the most accurate portions with both small and large kibble: It doled out amounts that were off by an average of just 3% and 4%, respectively. Some of our dismissals, on the other hand, deviated by up to an average of 41%.

The app gives you loads of control and information. As we found with most of the Wi-Fi–enabled feeders we tested, programming the Granary feeder was as simple as setting up multiple alarms in your phone. You can also perform a manual feeding with the tap of a button, track how much food has already been dispensed, and review daily logs. The app will also push an alert when the food level is low or if there’s a problem with the power or Wi-Fi signal. We found the Petlibro app was easier to set up initially and had a more intuitive interface than those of the Petkit and the Frienhund models (both of which also have cameras).

It can stop most creatures from stealing extra food. It’s virtually impossible for a creature without opposable thumbs to unscrew the hopper’s twist-on lid. And when we stuck our fingers and spoons into the dispenser hole, our efforts to pilfer kibble were thwarted by a rubbery seal that blocked our entrance (and the kibbles’ exit). The lid also features a silicone sealing ring, which helps to keep bugs out and to maintain the food’s freshness.

You can watch your pet eat, if you want to. The camera-enabled Granary feeder lets you watch live video as well as review past footage stored locally on an SD card (not included) or via one of Petlibro’s paid cloud subscriptions. But for the price of a subscription—$6 a month for seven days of footage or $12 a month for 30 days—you might be better off pairing the camera-less Granary with a dedicated pet camera that gives you more control over what is and isn’t captured.

It’s expensive. The Granary is one of the more expensive feeders we tested, costing 2.5 times more than our budget pick. If you can do without the camera, the lower-cost Granary Smart Feeder should give you everything you need.

More tech can also mean more issues. When the Wi-Fi or power goes out, the Granary feeder will continue to work (at least it did in our tests), but the app will not. You won’t be able to access information about the feeder until after everything turns back on. And with any camera-enabled device, there are potential risks. “If consumers place an internet accessible camera in their home, they should be mindful about where it is placed, what is visible in the camera, and what that might disclose,” said Max Eddy, Wirecutter’s security and privacy expert.

If you’re trying an auto pet feeder for the first time, this basic model is low risk. It outperforms models in the same price range, but it doesn’t come with any extra features.

The PitPet Smart Automatic Cat Feeder is a good starter model if you’re looking to dip your toe (or paw) into automatic feeders without spending a ton. It’s a basic programmable feeder with few bells and whistles, but this simplicity is also its strength. It shares some of the same architecture as several other models we looked at, but the PitPet feeder was the best-performing model among them.

It’s a good option to see whether a feeder is right for your pet. The PitPet feeder delivered more-accurate portions than the other feeders in this price range, with an average deviation of 8% for large kibble and 22% for small kibble. Both the Voluas and the Petory feeders delivered portions that were an average of 41% too big when dispensing small kibble (they both did better with large kibble). But if your pet is on a strict diet, you’re better off with the Granary feeder.

The physical control panel isn’t the worst. For all of the “analog” feeders we tested, the experience of programming mealtimes and portions was akin to setting up a car’s radio presets, except harder. But of these basic models, the PitPet feeder’s control panel was the simplest to navigate. Its screen was easy to see at all angles, it indicated how many meals were programmed, and it showed whether or not those meals had been dispensed for the day.

It doesn’t have a robust lid seal. The PitPet feeder’s lid fits tightly on top of the hopper. But, unlike the Granary and Air feeders, the PitPet doesn’t have a silicone seal to help keep food fresh. The lid stays put with a “safety lock” (a strap that runs across the top and attaches to two hook-and-loop pieces you stick onto the sides of the hopper when you first set it up). This helps to keep the lid on tight, to prevent spills and kibble theft, but it likely won’t help with much else.

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This carousel feeder delivers the portions you put in it, reliably serving up to six meals a day. It’s one of the easiest to clean, but you can only schedule meals in 15-minute increments.

If you prefer to control your pet’s portions yourself, the PetSafe 6 Meal Pet Feeder is a tray model that lets you put a premeasured amount of kibble into a rotating carousel that looks like a Trivial Pursuit game piece. It has some similarities to our former pick, the PetSafe 5 Meal Pet Feeder, but this model is less vulnerable to food theft and doesn’t look like an ugly Roomba. It’s also the easiest feeder to clean.

It takes only a few minutes to clean. The PetSafe 6 Meal model was by far the easiest to clean of all the feeders we tested, owing to the simplicity of its construction. It has three removable pieces—the bowl, the lid, and the carousel. The bowl and carousel can both go in the dishwasher. But even when we hand-washed everything, it still took less time and effort to clean than any other feeder we tested.

It has decent security and is easy to set up. The clear plastic lid twists on, so it’s doubtful any animal could get enough of a grip on it to unscrew it. And if they were able to get a paw up the dispenser hole, there wouldn’t be anything left in that segment of the carousel to steal, since that meal would have already been dispensed.

The portions are as reliable as you are. If you can commit to weighing your pet’s food on a kitchen scale before putting it into this feeder, the PetSafe 6’s portions will always be accurate. The only deviations will be the result of human error, so if your pet is on a strict diet, and you’re up to the task of daily measuring, this feeder is a great option.

The bowl is made of plastic. Unlike our other picks, the PetSafe 6 Meal Pet Feeder doesn’t have a stainless steel bowl, and the plastic bowl it does have feels flimsy and cheap. Plastic can harbor bacteria that can cause or aggravate feline chin acne. But if you run the bowl through the dishwasher, you can reduce the risk of harmful bacteria flourishing.

It can be difficult to program. The control panel, which is protected from wandering paws under a flap at the rear of the machine, falls into the middle of the pack. The screen isn’t easy to see from all angles, and you have to program the clock and all mealtimes by pressing a single button over and over, for both the hour and the minute settings.

It has a few annoying limitations. The PetSafe 6 feeder operates only on battery power, but it doesn’t come with batteries, so we had to buy four D cells before we could use it. When programming mealtimes, you can only set them in 15-minute increments. So if you want to feed your pet at a specific time, like 1:10 or 8:17, you’re out of luck.

You can control this feeder with a simple app, and it’s a fraction of the cost of our main pick. But you lose some features and get less-accurate portions.

The Papifeed Smart Automatic Cat Feeder has a similar skeleton to the PitPet and other models we tested—the hopper, base, and dish are all virtually identical. But this feeder is mostly controlled by an app, so it’s easier to set up a meal schedule.

The simple app interface makes it a cinch to program. For a few dollars more than the PitPet feeder, the Papifeed (yes, this is a lot of “p” names) offers a much easier programming experience through the Smart Life app. The app’s interface is minimal, and this simplicity makes it easy to navigate. It lets you program meals, feed your pet on demand, change portions, and track the feeding history.

It’s easy to clean and keeps food decently secure. The Papifeed has only a few pieces—the hopper, lid, bowl, and bowl holder, so it took only a few minutes to wash it in the kitchen sink. The lid is held on with a “safety strap,” just like the PitPet’s lid, so it should be virtually impossible for an animal to knock off. When we tried to steal food from the dispenser’s opening, our long spoon managed to dislodge a few stray bits of small kibble, but no large pieces came loose.

It uses a third-party app. The Papifeed is controlled via the Smart Life app, which wasn’t built by or for the feeder’s manufacturer. Smart Life appears to have several customers, and, in fact, we used the same app to control the Frienhund, another feeder we tested. “Everyone outsources, but it makes it murky about who is responsible for securing the product,” Max Eddy said when he reviewed the Smart Life app and its privacy policy.

The company doesn’t have a proven track record. “Papifeed does not provide a privacy policy on its website, nor does it provide much information about its company in general,” Max told us. This lack of transparency and presence made us wary, and it led us to wonder how long the product and its software might continue to be supported. We’ll keep an eye on it.

The portion accuracy could be better. The Papifeed model deviated from its stated portions by an average of 20% for small kibble and 9% for large kibble. It’s not the worst we’ve seen, but if you need more control over your pet’s calorie intake, the Granary feeder is a better option.

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This is the only wireless feeder we’ve found that uses a built-in rechargeable battery, so you can put it anywhere you want. But it’s easier for a pet to break into than our other picks.

The Petlibro Air Smart Feeder is a rechargeable feeder that can be used wirelessly, freeing you from the tyranny of wall outlets. This Wi-Fi–enabled feeder has great portion accuracy for small kibble, and its app makes it a cinch to program.

You can put it wherever your pet wants it. The Air feeder is the only rechargeable wireless model we found in our search (the company also makes a non-“smart” version, without the app, that’s also rechargeable). The PetSafe 6 Meal also operates on battery power, but there’s no option for a wall adapter, and the rest of the feeders we tested use batteries mainly as a backup for when the power goes out. The Air feeder can do both, and the Petlibro app lets you know how much battery power is left, so you’re not caught off-guard. It’s also light and simple to move around, so it’s easy to take advantage of its wireless capabilities.

It’s well built and simple to use. The Air feeder uses the same app as the Granary, but since it doesn’t have a camera, the interface is more streamlined. You can easily set up your meal program, see how much food was dispensed, and review the history logs. The Air also comes in two sizes: 2 liters and 6 liters, so you can tailor it to your pet’s needs (we tested the 2-liter version). The lid and dispenser chute both feature a seal to help keep food from going stale.

For small kibble, it has excellent portion accuracy (not so much with the bigger stuff). The Air feeder had an average portion discrepancy of just 4% when dispensing small kibble. Only the Granary model performed better, with a 3% average discrepancy for small kibble.

Large kibble portions vary. When dispensing larger kibble, the Petlibro Air Smart Feeder didn’t do as well as it did with the smaller-size kibble, delivering portions that were an average of 20% less than what they should’ve been. Your mileage may vary, but if you use the Air with larger kibble sizes, keep an eye on it so you can make adjustments to the portions to suit your animal’s diet.

It’s a little insecure. The Air feeder has a big, clickable push-button on the lid that makes it easy to open for filling and cleaning—but it could also be easy for a smart cat or dog to get it open for a face-full of food. The dispenser chute has a silicone seal covering it, but we managed to push this up enough with our fingers so that some kibble fell loose. If you have a pet who’s criminally disposed, the Air feeder might not be the best option.

We plan to test wet-food feeders that offer some refrigeration, including the Petlibro Polar and the Cat Mate C500, as well as some RFID/microchip models, like the SureFeed, the Petlibro One, and the Closer Pets MiBowl feeders.

We’ll also look at the newly released Pawsync, a programmable hopper feeder with Wi-Fi and a built-in scale to weigh portions.

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Our former top pick, the PetSafe 5 Meal Pet Feeder, was prone to food theft. Although the lid exposes only one tray segment at a time, determined pets could make it advance to the next segment ahead of schedule. We also found that kibble could easily get trapped underneath the tray, making it attractive to insects.

The Petkit Yumshare Dual-Hopper with Camera is well built and had excellent portion accuracy (a 7% average deviation from the expected portions). But in our testing, it occasionally doled out an entire extra portion of food in our testing, so if you set it for two portions, it might give you three. This kind of unreliability could lead to overfeeding. If that hadn’t happened, this model would’ve been a pick because it’s easy to program using Petkit’s app, it has great features, it’s well built, and it shares the same app as our pet fountain pick.

It was difficult to gauge the portion accuracy on the Frienhund Smart Camera Automatic Cat Feeder because in the manual the manufacturer lists a range only (10 to 20 grams). In our testing, it didn’t deliver portions close to either end of this range.

The Petory Timed Automatic Cat Feeder delivered some of the least accurate portions across both sizes of kibble, especially the smaller pieces, diverging from its stated portion by an average of 41% for that size. It has a bright display screen, but it was one of the least intuitive to program.

The PetSafe Healthy Pet Simply Feed Automatic Feeder, a former pick, is huge, holding up to 24 cups of food. But our experts warned against storing more than a week’s worth of kibble in any hopper to prevent the food from possibly going rancid. This model also limits the number of manual feedings you can do, so it provides less flexibility than most of our picks.

The PetSafe Smart Feed 2.0 Wifi-Enabled Automatic Dog & Cat Feeder must be programmed by an app, but the app’s interface was glitchy and practically unusable: Whenever we tried to set up a feeding schedule, it would rewind the clock by an hour, no matter which buttons we tapped. Its adapter is also much bigger than that of any other feeder we tested, taking up the space of three outlets on a power strip.

The Voluas Automatic Cat Feeder can only be programmed to dispense a maximum of four meals a day, and it was hard to see the screen on the control panel from all angles, unless you were looking at it dead on. It also felt noticeably chintzier than the other models we tested.

This article was edited by Harry Sawyers.

Mikel Delgado, PhD, certified applied animal behaviorist and certified cat behavior consultant, phone interview, July 18, 2024

Lisa Weeth, DVM, DACVIM (Nutrition), principal veterinary nutritionist at Weeth Nutrition Services, Metropolitan Animal Specialty Hospital in Los Angeles, phone interview, July 19, 2024

Amy Nichelason, DVM, DABVP in canine and feline practice, clinical assistant professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, phone interview, July 23, 2024

Jacob Ackerman, chief technology officer, SkyLink Data Centers, phone interview, December 4, 2017

Kimberly Alt, writer, Canine Journal, email interview, November 30, 2017

Sarah Beene, category manager for water and feed solutions, PetSafe, email interview, February 13, 2018

Michael Kaiser, executive director, National Cyber Security Alliance, phone interview, December 7, 2017

Jillian Spitz, spokesperson, PetSafe, email interview, December 8, 2017

Ernie Ward, DVM, founder, Association for Pet Obesity Prevention, phone interview, December 6, 2017

Mary Emma Young, director of communications, Pet Food Institute, email interview, December 26, 2017

Mel Plaut

Mel Plaut is a staff writer covering pets at Wirecutter. They developed a special affinity for animals at an early age, when every stray cat and runaway dog ended up at their family’s doorstep. Their writing has appeared in The New York Times, the New York Daily News, USA Today, HuffPost, NPR’s All Things Considered, and others.

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