Keeping Moist Food Fresh With the SureFeed Sealed Pet Bowl

If you have a slow-eating cat like Pierre, you may leave food down for him all the time just to be sure that there’s food waiting when he decides to eat a few more bites. Unfortunately, most people who leave food out for hours on end opt to use dry food because they think it doesn’t go bad as fast. The problem is that dry food isn’t good for your cat.

When our friends at SureFlap offered to let us test their sealed pet bowl that closes over the contents of the bowl to keep it fresh, we thought this could be the answer to the dilemma of keeping food fresh for slow eaters, so we had to check it out.

Why is Moist Food Important?

First, let’s talk moisture. Your cat needs it to keep from getting dehydrated, and the older your cat is, the more likely your cat needs even more of it.

Here’s part of the contents label from a bag of dry food. Check out the moisture content:

Now here’s the moisture content of a can of cat food I had on the shelf of Pierre’s canned food. That’s a lot more moisture!

A cat eating dry food has to drink a lot of water to offset the lack of moisture content in his food, and a lot of them don’t keep up with the necessary water intake. Cats eating canned food are getting it as part of their dinner!

So… why do so many people feed kibble? In a lot of cases, it comes down to convenience, and I get that, believe me! When I first tried feeding canned food to my cats, it sat around a long time, and it ended up looking like this.

Did you say yuck when you saw the brownish dried-out parts? Me too! Cats aren’t big fans of it, either. If your cat is a slow eater and prefers to eat a little now and a little later (I’m looking at you, Pierre), this can be a real problem, and it’s part of the reason that a lot of people abandon the idea of feeding canned food and go back to dehydrating kibble.

Keeping Moist Food Fresh with the SureFeed Sealed Pet Bowl

What if you had a butler who would stand next to your cat’s bowl and put some cling wrap over it when your cat walked away and then took it back off so that the food was nice and moist when your cat was hungry for another bite or two in a little while?

I’m totally not going to tell you about that, because I have never had a butler, and if I ever do, I have some other tasks for him first. But even better than a butler is a bowl that will do the same thing for you 24 hours a day. That’s what I found with the SureFeed sealed pet bowl when Pierre tried it out. It comes with a bowl that has a silicone lip around the top and then a battery-powered bowl with motion sensors on three sides.

It’s pretty neat because it opens up when it sees your cat approach, and it closes tight again. Just watch. (If the video below doesn’t display for you, view directly on YouTube)

As you can see, this bowl doesn’t limit access to only one cat, so you would want to use it in a situation where all of your cats are eating the same diet. (SureFeed does make a bowl that limits access to a single cat. More about that here.)

The bowl has a training mode where the door only has limited motion so that you can gradually get your cat accustomed to something on their bowl moving like that. Since Pierre has been eating from a SureFeed microchip bowl for about eight months, we didn’t have to go through the introduction process for this bowl, but he learned in less than a week with his previous bowl using the same gradual process.

I did notice that this bowl is very quiet. When Pierre finishes eating and steps away from his usual bowl, I’m accustomed to hearing it from all the way at my desk in the next room, but the SureFeed sealed pet bowl is so quiet I couldn’t hear it from a room away.

SureFeed Sealed Pet Bowl Really Does Keep Moist Food Fresher

I was kind of skeptical about how well the SureFeed sealed pet bowl worked to keep food fresh. I mean, how sealed could that hinged top really be? So I put half a can of cat food on a saucer and the other half in the SureFeed bowl, then I left it in my spare bathroom.

You may remember we wrote before about Newton and Pierre objecting to a closed door in the house, and some of you wondered what was behind the door. Those photos were of frustrated kitties who could smell the food in the open saucer for nine hours while it was sitting in the bathroom for this test. Cats have an amazing sense of smell, so maybe the two of them could smell the food inside the sealed SureFeed bowl, too, but I can’t smell it when the bowl is closed. That led keeps in smells and keeps flying insects out when it is shut since it sits snugly over the bowl against the silicone lip of the bowl.

So how did the SureFeed bowl do for keeping the food fresh? You can see that the food left on the plate for hours had dark, crusty parts from exposure to the air, while the food that spent that time closed in the SureFeed sealed feeder still looked moist and fresh.

I was surprised at how fresh the food looked, since I expected it to look a little worse for wear, but the bowl sealed it up really well.

Fresher food has to be healthier for slow-eating cats, so that’s a paws-up win for everyone.

FTC Disclosure: We were compensated to review the SureFeed sealed pet bowl. The opinions in this review are our own and not influenced by any outsider. We receive no additional benefits for talking about the product or company.

Cat Writers in New York City for BlogPurr

Last week, I went to New York City for an event called BlogPurr. Merck brought together veterinarians, a cat behavior expert, and a small panel of cat writers to discuss issues specific to feline wellness and advocacy.

blogpurr_01_wm

You’ll be reading more about topics the sessions touched on in the future, but today I wanted to share a little overview of the event itself.

The morning’s lineup of speakers began with author Amy Shojai, who writes about feline behavior. She turned the tables a little bit and instead of just discussing feline behavior, she led a discussion of human behavior, especially how we all interact online.

Amy Shojai speaks at BlogPurr

We discussed how there are so many different personality types among cats, and among humans, too, and how that is reflected in the way we interact online. It was great to be reminded that there are people reading who are too intimidated to comment and join the conversation, and that we need to make sure everyone has a voice in the discussion so that everybody is heard.

The second speaker was Dr. Margie Scherk, who founded the first ever feline-only veterinary practice and is now an international speaker and writer on veterinary topics. I was blown away by her amazing of energy and passion about cats and their care!

Dr. Margie Scherk speaks at BlogPurr

She opened by talking about how there are so millions more cats than dogs here in the US. I had no idea that there are nearly twice the number of cats as there are dogs in Canada. Our friends north of the border love cats more than we do! Yet with so many more cats than dogs living in our homes, cats get to the vet much less frequently, and the number is decreasing.

She shared some really interesting numbers about some of the excuses people give for why their cats don’t make it in to see the vet, including 60% saying their cat “hates” the vet visit, and 39% only willing to visit if their cat is sick. Cats are great at hiding illnesses, and humans aren’t very good at seeing the subtle signs of a sick cat. That makes preventative care even more important so that the cat doesn’t get sick in the first place or the illness is caught early during a routine visit.

One of my favorite things about the sessions at BlogPurr is that they didn’t talk down to us as non-veterinarians about veterinary topics. Hearing a vet say to a non-veterinary audience that veterinarians and their team members are often less comfortable working with cats than dogs was really refreshing, since it took me years of trying to convince myself I was imagining exactly that.

Veterinarians are now learning how to make their practices more cat friendly, including less-threatening exam rooms and helping cats be less fearful when they are at the vet. Since so much of what is perceived as “bad” behavior at the vet comes from a cat being afraid, this can make a big difference in your cat’s experience at the vet… which means it is a better experience for you, too.

During Dr. Scherk’s talk, she spotted a cat watching her from a window across the street. I hope that kitty learned something from her talk about why going to the vet was important!

Tuxedo cat looks out window, New York City

A third talk was by Dr. Cathy Lund, who has an all-feline practice, City Kitty, in Providence, Rhode Island. I had no idea how much people can be in denial about fleas and ticks. Sure, fleas are embarrassing, but Dr. Lund has had clients tell her that their cat can’t have fleas because they live in a nice neighborhood. Some people really don’t understand that it can happen to anyone.

Cathy Lund and Amy Shojai at BlogPurr

Dr. Lund also explained what a huge fear of tick-borne illness there is in her part of the country. It’s bad enough that people surrender their cats to shelters out of fear of catching diseases from ticks! Obviously, there has to be some solution that helps keep these cats in their homes by calming the fears of the humans they live with.

She told us about how successful the field study was at her clinic for Merck’s new Bravecto for cats and shared quotes from grateful people whose cats were part of the trial and used it to get their flea infestations under control at least. Never having heard a firsthand explanation of participating in a field study, that was really fascinating, and I can only imagine how good it must have felt to help the itchy cats and their frustrated families.

This was followed by a talk from Dr. Robert Armstrong, a veterinarian with Merck, who shared more information about the studies leading up to the new flea and tick prevention product. I laughed when one of the slides said, “People do not want to see disgusting photos.” But it’s true! How many gross photos or diagrams are used at a vet’s office to try to explain things to you and end up squicking you out instead?

Dr. Robert Armstrong speaks at BlogPurr

I thought it was interesting when he talked about formulating a parasite preventative that lasts three months, so it lasts through the time that flea eggs in the household environment hatch and could re-colonize your cat. My first thought was of how long it took us to get fleas under control after my mother brought her cats and dog to live with my sister. A topical treatment you don’t have to remember to apply every month like Bravecto would have been a great solution for those itchy cats.

After the talk, we broke for lunch, and then it was time to go visit the cats.

New York Public Library lion statue