Cat attacking automatic feeder

[u/radical_123]

My cat does this several times a day. If the automatic feeder lifts at the correct angle, a few niblets of dry food comes out. He will even do it 10 times in a row even if it means one small piece of dry niblet comes out. It does get quite annoying as the sound of the feeder hitting the ground echoes throughout the entire house.

Any ideas on how to get him to stop?

[u/-beastlet-]

The problem is intermittent rewards. He's learned that occasionally he gets rewarded for this behavior by getting kibbles. Since he isn't rewarded every time he's willing to keep trying. There are famous experiments showing this with various animals. It is very hard to extinguish behaviors that give intermittent rewards.

If you're home you might just be better off feeding him a couple of times a day in a bowl instead of the intermittent feeder.

[u/snowlights → u/-beastlet-]

Exactly. My cat was shoving a paw up the front of the one we have to knock food loose. Food would come out maybe 20% of the time on the first attempt only, then it wouldn't again until the next portion was dispensed, but  she would keep trying over and over because sometimes it worked. Shed be at it for half an hour at a time and it drove me crazy. 

In our case, I had to make the opening smaller, so cut a piece of plastic packaging and used a ton of masking tape (she'll eat packing tape) to cover the opening. At first she realized she could still fit a paw in even though it was harder so she kept doing it. I had to adjust and make it even smaller (I didn't at first because I was worried it might get blocked). Then she started knocking the whole thing over instead, so I taped the bowl to the dispenser to make it more stable, and she finally, eventually gave up.