Senses Food Maze

It's a great idea for entertaining the food motivated house floof. However, ours are tricksy and quickly realised toppling the tower was easier than playing by the rules. If you can weight it down, you can prevent it. I feel this should have been a consideration by the manufacturer. Otherwise, no complaints.

The media could not be loaded.  Into Day 1 with the Catit Senses food maze. Our cat "Grace" could never be described as lazy, but I must admit that she is not overly bright either. This combination, enhanced by our desire to keep her happy has resulted in a slightly tubby (not tabby) cat. We read the excellent DAVIDE review and we have purchased one of these items.It is early days, but Grace has the manual dexterity to move things around in her dirt box and provided she washes her paws, I hope that she will grasp the concept of the Food Maze. So far she has eaten from the tray at the bottom and hissed at it. We are hoping that eventually she will reach inside the maze through one of the various apertures at three levels and start to hook the food out.I must admit that for the price, I think that this item represents good value and hopefully Grace will soon be hooking out dried cat food into the tray, or at worse onto the surrounding and attached mat. It certainly seems well constructed and I am confident that given a few days of starvation, either she or we will give in. So why four stars and not 3 or 5? Basically I feel that this item will be devil to keep clean and will need disassembly and reassembly every day so 4 it is.More reports to follow.Day 2Grace has spent a tortured day investigating the imposter in her house in the form of the food maze. Both my wife and I have shared with Grace our interpretation of how a cat should interact with this toy. Grace has stared at me like I am an idiot and tried to swipe the food from my wife's finger; claws out! We have not fed Grace today, except to place her ration in the maze and left her and the cleaner to get on with it. I fear that we might be seeking a new cleaner shortly, either because she has resigned or less likely, but possible, that she has been devoured by a far from content cat. Still hopeful though.Day 3Grace appear s to have given up :-( she stubbornly refuses to take the food out of the maze and sits and looks at it. We have tried to tempt her by placing the tail of her favourite toy mouse into the opening at the top and inviting her to paw it through one of the side vents; no interest. We have placed pieces of dried food along the periphery of each of the openings; no interest. I must say that Grace is not the brightest of cats, but we remain pleased with the product as Grace is most definitely looking trimmer. Let's hope tomorrow is more positive.Day 4Grace is not emaciated yet! but I have to admit that she does not appear to be happy. Both my wife and I have tried the mouse, changed the location of the feeder but unlike the Tom cat on the product picture, Grace has not set foot on the mat yet along put her face or paw into the top. She has tried unsuccessfully to get her mouse's tail out once now, but her ration stays put. I am fearful that soon the feeder will fill up to overflowing and then Grace might just start to gorge herself.STOP PRESSMy wife is going through the training session again and whilst Grace is meowing and looking sad, I think that the sadness is more an animal's intuition and sensitivity regarding a human losing their mind, rather than hunger. I gather that Grace has removed a number from the absolute top of the feeder this evening and the mood of gloom and despondency is lifted for the time being. We live on in hope.Day 5 and Day 6We feel a breakthrough might be coming. Increasingly Grace has become more confident (hungry) and whilst we are pleased that she will swipe a paw at the mouse tail, unless she has dislodged a piece of food through knocking the tower, we are not certain that she has managed to get a single piece out trhough the holes otherwise. We are feeding her small amounts to prevent the RSPCA being called by our 14 year old, who aspires to be a vet, but I fear that soon the White Van with 5 letters emblazoned on the side and a man/woman in uniform will arrive; probably accompanied by a TV crew (which reminds me I need to get a haricut just in case).Tomorrow will be by last review on this item. I fully expected our cat to have fathomed this contraption out by now and whilst I have no doubt that some owners have trained their more intelligent cats to amuse themselves to feed from this item, i fear that Grace will not master this skill. I am extremely fond of her and would not want her in any way to suffer, so unless it is emptied tomorrow, I fear it will be consigned to the shed.MORE NEWSGrace has still not mastered the maze, but she has identified that I have placed a trail cam to follow her every move! I must admit that she has never impressed me as an intelligent cat, but she is obviously more able to communicate than I thought; if you look at our video you can see that she is trying to send me a message.

I have two elderly rescue girls, who had never been outside before they came to live with me, and who I still don't entirely trust to allow outside unsupervised as they have little to no road sense and get lost easily. I am not happy keeping cats inside as they are designed to hunt and roam, and so I try to enrich their lives by providing them with puzzle feeders dotted around the house. They love their feeders, they love trying to work out how to use them, and they are so motivated by the reward of food and play, so it's wins all round.When I first bought this Catit Tower Feeder I assumed it was going to be too easy for them, and worried they'd lose interest in it quite quickly. How wrong I was! Yes, it didn't take them much effort or time to work out how to get the food out of it, and my larger cat (Maisie) quickly worked out that she could tip the whole thing over and roll it about and the treats would fall out pretty quickly. However, I resolved that by cutting a circular hole in the middle of a desk mat I had but didn't use, which fits snugly onto the base of the tower and weights it enough to prevent Maisie from tipping the whole thing over. It's easily removable for cleaning and looks a whole lot nicer than the grey rubbery base which is supplied. (If you're interested the desk pad I cut the hole in is, I think, the PLÖJA from Ikea, which costs about £5).Both my cats love this tower and spend hours hooking out tiny bits of food from all its crevices. It's a fabulous feeder, and I can recommend it.

We have hijacked our cat guardian's amazon account to leave a review for this CatIt food maze feeder!! My name's Sylvester, and I'm 10 years old - quite the elder statesman these days, although I still love to go out and hunt and bring back my contributions to the family larder). My cat-mates here are Smudge (he's a young 'un, only 2 years old, too full of energy he doesn't know what to do with half the time - I'm trying to teach him to hunt, but he's not very good at it!) and Tosca (she's 9, and quite a reserved lady really - doesn't go out much). Mrs Cat Guardian and her family adopted us all at different times from our local shelter, and weirdly we're all black and white too! We're not related to each other as far as we know, but hey - this is a small island, so you never know (but that's another cat's tale for another day!). I'm really here to tell all you fellow cats about this puzzle toy Mrs Cat Guardian bought us this week!After hiding from the postman when he rang the bell (it still catches us by surprise!) we emerged from our various hiding places to see what all the fuss was about. We saw Mrs Cat Guadian open the box and watched Miss Daughter Cat Guardian assembling this strange, plastic thing that looks like some kind of human modern art with a real 60s vibe. We didn't know what it was, but curiosity had got the better of us (yes, we know all about curiosity and cats, but we decided to take our chances!).Even more intriguingly, Mrs Cat Guardian got our dried cat food box out again. She shook it to get our attention, but we were not that easily won over - we usually only get 'extra' cat treats that early in the morning when we need to be 'persuaded' into the plastic carry box which means a ride in the car to the strange man in the place with lots of other strange animals where they do things like weighing us and propelling worming tablets down our throats against our will! We were a bit suspicious that this strange contraption, and the food Mrs Cat Guardian was putting through the hole in the top of it, was just a ruse, and that somewhere the boxes were lurking!However, after a few minutes, it was clear no boxes were around - this weird plastic tower thing really was innocent of any subterfuge! So we took a closer look... and there was the food, just inside the device on the top layer. But it was stuck inside, and we couldn't get it out! Then we spotted the paw-sized openings all around the edges of the device. Aha! Got it now - stick in paw, get food. This is too easy... oh... hadn't spotted the little holes around the edges of the 'floor'. The food's disappeared down one of them, and now on the level below. Bother! So near and yet so far!It was Tosca who worked it out (I hate to admit it, but she really is the cleverest one out of all of us) and she took over and showed Smudge and me what to do to get the food all the way to the bottom. We realised it just took a bit of perseverance and patience - I'm not known for those, but I learn fast!That was two days ago, and now the feeder with the 60s design vibe is a fixture in our Cat Guardian's living room. Mrs Cat Guardian saves some of our dried food each day to put in the top, and then just leaves us to it - no more miaowing to get their attention for a snack, and even though it takes longer than it used to to get our snack, even we have to to admit that it's much more stimulating than just having it put into a bowl and not having to work for it - I mean, where's the fun in the easy life?!So, to all you cats out there who want to add a bit of variety into your life, and need a way to make food more fun, ask your Cat Guardians to get you this feeder - we're sure you'll love it as much as we do!So long for now, we're going back for another play with the feeder!Sylvester, Smudge and Tosca x