PetSafeSlimcat Slow Feeder Ball for Cats - Interactive Puzzle Game for Your Cat - Fill with Food and Treats - Great for Indoor Play for Kittens and Adult Cats, Portion Control and Fast Eaters (Blue)

I read about 100 reviews of this product before I finally sprung for it and bought it (I'm a grad student....$6 can be up to two meals if I try hard enough!) and all my worries have now gone out the window. I have a 4-month-old kitten, Kiki; and I have had this product for about 24 hours now.This is going to be a long review, so here's the major thing that I was halfway expecting that did not happen: THIS IS NOT AN EXERCISE BALL. By "exercise ball" I mean something like a ping-pong ball or tennis ball that kitty will play with herself like she's trying out for the itty bitty kitty soccer league. I sort of thought it might be, due to the product advertising it as a cat weight-loss aid, but in fact most cats (especially fat cats) will bat at this with their paws and push it with their nose, not smack it across the room. It is not going to travel very far per smack and your cat will not be running around after it. I actually consider this a plus because if she were sending it across the room with every push, it might drop food where she wouldn't find it, but instead she pushes it a little way, sniffs around it for food, then pushes it again. You can see this in the several very excellent video reviews that already exist for this product. Every other benefit of this product that it claimed/that others reported in their reviews has now been validated by my own experience.Here are the things I was worried about that did not happen:Worry #1: That Kiki would not be able to figure out how to use it. She's a pretty smart little cat, but I was afraid she'd dislike the idea of working for her food or something, and keep going back to her bowl. Instead, I filled up this ball with 1/2 cup (=4oz., the daily suggested amount) of her dry kitten kibble (it has pretty tiny x-shaped pieces, <1-cm square and 3-mm thickness), twisted the ball so that the holes looked big enough to let a few kibbles out at once, and put it on the floor. I rattled it around quite a bit as I was filling it/carrying it so she was very interested and seemed to have figured out before I even put it down that her food was in there. As soon as it touched the ground she poked it with her nose, it moved about half a foot away from her, a couple kibbles fell out, and she was munching. I didn't even have to take away her food bowl! (That would have been hard because it's attached to her water bowl =P And by the way, she still drinks her water from the usual place.)Worry #2: That Kiki would be too smart for the ball; i.e., she would manage to get her food out too fast and still be eating it all at once. Since she got the hang of it so quickly the first time, I made the holes smaller the next time I fed her with it (basically as small as possible while still allowing kibble to come out). It's pretty difficult to get the kibble out with the holes this size actually -- I can shake the ball gently with the holes pointing downward and have nothing come out. Kiki still rolls the ball around the floor and the kibble now comes out at a rate of 1 kibble every 10-15 seconds. This does not deter her from continuing to push the ball around, and because it requires a non-trivial amount of effort to get food, she won't continue to eat after she's no longer hungry.Worry #3: That it would not be able to hold enough food to last her 1-2 days (I bought the ball primarily because I'm going on a short trip soon and she'll be all by herself for 1.5 days. For longer trips I'd ask someone to come feed her, but this seemed like a better solution for just a 2-day outing). Last night to test the capacity I filled the ball with 1/2-cup around 8pm, gave it to her, woke up the next day at 2pm (long story) and went to check on her and there was still food in the ball. WIN.Worry #4: That the ball would make a huge mess by leaving lost kibble pieces all over the house. We have hardwood floors so it wouldn't have been such a huge problem anyway, but I was concerned about her pushing the ball under the couch (she always loses her smaller balls under there) because that would be a pain to clean. In reality, two things happen: first, Kiki follows the ball closely with her nose -- if she pushes it and nothing falls out, she sniffs all around the ball before she pushes it again. She's basically a vacuum cleaner with this thing. I left her with a full ball for 18 hours and all I found afterward was 1 forgotten piece of kibble in a corner under the sink (which I brought to her and she promptly gobbled it up). Second, the fact that the ball does not travel very far effectively limits it to whichever room you put it down in. I usually leave Kiki with it in the kitchen and by the time she's done with it it's still in the kitchen. After 18 hours I found her with it about 6 feet into the living room, but there was no breadcrumb trail of kibbles behind her or anything like that =PSo, maybe all this tells you is that I worry a lot, but basically this product delivers. It limits the amount of food my cat can eat at once, stimulates her instinct to hunt for food (AND reproduces the natural reward for hunting: feeding!), reduces/eliminates begging, keeps her out of trouble by distracting her for long stretches of time, and prevents the bulging stomach I used to see after her feeding times. It's difficult for me to weigh her but just by looking at her I would guess she has already lost 0.5lbs (and she only weighs about 5lbs so this is excellent) and it is all in the belly bulge area. She seems more active too (running up and down the stairs, asking me to chase her, running after her ball toys, etc).For those inclined to criticize:I know she is a kitten and a lot of people free-feed their kittens because they are supposed to be growing at a tremendous rate for the first several months of life, but the other thing to remember is that what you expose your kitty to before the age of 6 months is what she is going to be expecting for the rest of her life. I don't want to teach her bad habits (like expecting a full bowl of food 24/7) just because I can't resist her sad-kitty-whimper face. I can always tell if she is actually hungry or if she is just begging for lack of anything better to do because if she's just bored she'll stop begging as soon as I pick up a toy.

My food aggressive, overeating, mischievous cat has had a problem regurgitating food after every meal. After many years of vet visits and multiple attempts at solutions, nothing worked. I realized he was eating way too fast. I saw this product, read the review of another person whose cat had the same issue. After reading his victory statement, thought I’d give this a chance. This small little wonder toy of plastic is a God send! It stops him from eating fast. No more vomiting! Plus he’s getting exercise from chasing it around. I was worried it seemed a little flimsy, but this cat is a clumsy furball of destruction and he hasn’t destroyed it yet. So I would say it surprisingly holds up well. Nicely done!

One of my cats is obsessed with food, and she is the main reason I bought these (I got 2 of them). When it comes to eating, she is like a dog, she practically inhales her food, then looks around for more. I got this hoping to slow down her eating get her to eat less, and entertain her in the process. It didn't end up being a perfect solution, but it works pretty well. It definitely slows down her eating, which i am sure is good by itself, but her obsession with food doesn't allow her to eat less. If I completely fill the ball, she will stick with it until it was empty, so I still have to space out her meals throughout the day with smaller amounts.It also fulfills the entertainment part. She loves it. Granted, she loves it because there is food in it, but she becomes completely engrossed with it, and it is fun to watch. I have it set to release food slowly, and she may have to push it a few times to get a piece out, and she immediately pounces on it. It's really funny if two pieces happen to come out at once on different sides. :-)It's important to note that this is not much of a toy for them without the food in it. The food makes it interesting. It won't be interesting if you also have a full dish of food waiting for them. It's easier to eat the food out of the dish. You really need to use this as their food dish, not in addition to a food dish. That said, my cat took to it immediately. Initially, you need to leave the holes open a little more so that the food comes out easily. It is also a good idea to put a few pieces right next to the ball the first time. It may not be necessary, as my cats seem to be able to tell there is food in it just by sniffing it. Once they realize they get food out of it when they push it around, you can adjust the size of the holes to reduce the amount of food released.My only real issue with this is that the holes could have been done better. You can adjust the size of the openings by twisting the top and bottom sections of the ball. There are oval holes in the sides, but the shape of those holes allows smaller pellet foods to come out too easily (for my needs) or not at all. The round holes at the top might work better for those types of foods, but you can't open those by themselves. To use those, the oval ones on the sides are completely open, which would allow way too much food out. I think it could use a little design tweak. Still it works pretty good. I was using Iams Indoor formula, which is small pellets, and food comes out with every push. I wanted it to come out less often for my food obsessed cat, so I switched to Iams multi-cat formula, which is various shapes. That allowed me to set it so that she can push/bat it several times before a piece comes out.Overall, I highly recommend this product. It was effortless to get my cats to use it. I mainly bought it for my one cat, but my other took to it on their own, without any prep. Just keep in mind that it is a food driven toy. If you have a dish of food sitting out for them, and they are always full, they will likely ignore this.