How much food do you leave out for a cat while you are away...

DH and I are going to Lancaster, PA this weekend to start our christmas shopping. We will be away Sat-Mon. I know cats generally take care of themselves and all they need is enough water and food. The thing is that every day when we come home from work his bowls are empty. Ralphie eats a lot!

With the old Lucy (who is now deceased) she was a finiky eater. She would eat a little at a time.

DH's sister will come by on Sunday to check on him. My question is how much food should we leave out for him from sat until sun evening? and how much should DH's sister leave for him for Sunday through monday night...

Re: How much food do you leave out for a cat while you are away...

if i were you, i'd get the tub feeders. they look like upside down water bottles, and work the same way. when they eat whats in the dish, more food/water comes out.

Re: How much food do you leave out for a cat while you are away...

You can get a feeder that you can program. The feeder we have has 2 storage compartments that can open at specfic times up to 48 hours from the time you set them. They also come with 2 ice packs to keep the food chilled.
It seems to work fine for our cat. The only thing I hate is that when you set the timer, you're not setting a time such as 6PM. You're setting a "delay". So if you were leaving at 10am, and wanted the feeder to open at 7PM, you'd have to set the timer to "9", for a 9 hour delay. It's too much math sometimes.
Anyway we bought it at Petco, and I think it was about $40, max.

Re: How much food do you leave out for a cat while you are away...

I don't if we want to get this automatic feeder thing....we don't go away often so I don't want to spend 40 bucks for one weekend...maybe i'll just ask my mom to come up as well...