Um...how is pretty sure for an answer?  I could swear they exist...but
I might have just dreamed it.  I imagine it works the same way as the
cat doors that only work for cats wearing a special collar.

Sethran

monitor

That's very good advice...I really wish I could take it.  Between the
three of us someone is usually home every hour of the day.  I mean
really our pets are hardly left entirely alone.  But after Nic died
the boys started to kind of chaff about having so many animals and
having to care for them.  Neither of them are really willing to deal
with Heather and Robin right now and making sure they both get the
food they need.  I'm home in the morning and early afternoon and at
work until midnight.

I know that wet food is the best choice all around health wise.  When
Nic started to get really sick we started to worry more about just
getting him to eat and stop caring about what he was eating.
Honestly, we neglected Heather during the last few months of Nic's
life.  We still did everything she needed but we were too worried
about him to worry about her.  So the side effect was that she got
used to eating some really crappy foods and having the foods changed
all the time.  She's currently on a diet of mixed crap dry foods
(Friskies, etc...) and wet food twice a day.  We're phasing out the
crap food slowly and replacing it with the better brands (Wellness,
etc).  I'd love to get her eating only wet food.  But Heather is VERY
much a little priss.  She'll eat a food one day and never touch it
again.  She'll eat one food for a week and once we decide she's doing
well on and buy a bunch more cans...suddenly she acts like we just put
slop in her bowl.  She loves wet food...but she doesn't eat more than
one or two bites before walking away.  Wet food only would be fine for
Robin...but I don't feel that Heather eats enough of it to keep her
weight at a good level.  We're tried taking away the dry food and only
offering wet to see if she'll eat more and it doesn't work.  She
actually dropped a pound during that week.

I'm sorry, I'm just ranting at this point.  But it feels like this is
just another thing to deal with when there's already too much going
on.  Heather was a stray that had severe IBS the first few months of
her life with us.  I think that has alot to do with her food problems.
It also doesn't help that we did switch her food so often in our
attempts to coax Nic to eat something.  But what's done is done...I'm
just not sure how to fix the situation I've created with her.

Sethran

We feed Boots in a box/carton. He's actually gotten to prefer it that way.
Instead of turning the box upside-down I stuck adhesive backed Velcro on the
"flaps" so it opens up to put the food in and do a periodic cleaning. I had
to Velcro the bowl down out of reach of the door so Isabelle couldn't reach
in and slide the bowl over to where she could get to the food. I also cut a
small window in the side so he could see what he was eating. It's been
working well for the last 6 months or so.

Wendy