Woman v. Cat v. Automatic Feeder

This isn't news to anyone who has read this blog (or knows me in person), but my cat is C-R-A-Z-Y. She is completely food-obsessed, constantly worried that she will never get food again prompting her to try to eat. everything. NOW. This has lead to her breaking into our kitchen cupboards and eating her way through boxes of Tricsuits, loaves of bread (she prefers whole wheat), dehydrated buttermilk, cereal, raw rice, raw pasta, lentils, and most recently, anything for the kitchen that is made of silicone (2 oven mitts, my silicone pastry brush, and a couple of trivets). In our last place, she trained us to use the cabinet locks regularly. In our new place, we assumed the heavy wood doors would be enough to deter her. Think again! we have a 10lb weight guarding our pantry.

Over a year ago, my sister recommended getting an automatic feeder so that Oona wouldn't associate us with food. This was a fantastic idea as it meant she didn't wake us up at 5am for feedings, but instead spent all night banging the feeder against the wall in hopes of knocking it open and being rewarded with 2 weeks worth of kitty food. 

She was smart enough to figure out that if she bashed it agains the wall it would pop open at one of the joints. Her other attempted point of entry - jamming her paws up the feeding chute- resulted in breaking ti to the point where is gave her no food instead of more food. But though she was smart enough to realize that attacking feeder sometimes = food, she never figured out that one method fed her lots and the other fed her not at all.

Since we've moved she's become even more obsessed with the feeder. We tried putting a cardboard box on top, with a copy of the complete works of shakespeare, the bible, and a physics text book (our heaviest books) on top in order to weigh the box down - she knocked them off, chewed through the box and started attacking the feeder again. Finally, L built a wooden box prototype, which she also destroyed in less than 24 hours.

Finally, I took the broken remnants of the box and went to Home Depot. My plan was to find the salesperson who looked the most like a bored engineer, and throw myself on his mercy. I found my target - about 250 lbs, red hair, red beard, suspenders, and looking bored. I showed him the broken pieces and said "my 7 lb cat did this. I need to find a way to prevent her from getting to it. Just pretend I need to racoon-proof the damn thing." The first thought was to sink it in concrete, but then inspiration hit, he ran to his manager and asked if he could spend a some time building me a solution to my sad, broken feeder. Within 30 min we had most of the sales people in the stoe coming by to see what was going on, and w/in 1 hour, his manager decided he wanted in on the fun. 

Step 1 &2 - build and internal frame. Nail fence posting around the box:

Step 3,4,5: Add gutter chute, add top, finish with a padlock:

It's been about 2 weeks now and she has been entirely unable to open, knock over, attack, or otherwise injure or maim the damn feeder. She also no longer wakes us up at 2 in the morning with constant banging. She's now taken to sitting on top of it, waiting, just waiting, for kibble to fall into the bowl like mana from heaven. 

I don't want to declare this too premature, but I think victory may yet be mine. Ha!