Petivity, in collaboration with Purina, has launched the Smart Feeder for Cats, featuring AI-enabled facial recognition to enhance cat feeding practices. This new product provides pet owners with insights into their cats' eating habits, especially in households with multiple cats. To introduce the Smart Feeder, Petivity will host a special event in New York City on October 6, allowing attendees to feed shelter cats in real-time.
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The event, titled "Press to Feed," will take place at Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Terminal from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Participants can press a button to dispense meals for adoptable cats from partner shelters, which include the Atlanta Humane Society, Cat Adoption Team in Oregon, and Tree House Humane Society in Illinois. The feeding will be displayed live on a big screen.
Kristin Slater, Petivity’s Product Development Lead, emphasized the importance of understanding not just what cats eat but how and when they eat. She noted that obesity in cats is often due to owners being unaware of their cats’ feeding patterns. The Smart Feeder addresses this by tracking food consumption, eating frequency, and other behaviors, thus aiding in proactive pet care.
Dr. Natalie Langenfeld-McCoy, a data scientist at Purina, explained that the Smart Feeder draws on an extensive dataset comprising over 21,000 feeding sessions and more than 1,400 hours of video to recognize individual cats and detect changes in their eating habits. Notably, during product testing, 99.5% of cats were willing to use the feeder.
The Smart Feeder features include remote feeding control, customizable schedules, video check-ins via the Petivity app, alerts for low food supplies, and a design specifically tailored to reduce whisker fatigue. Priced at $149.99, the Smart Feeder is now available on platforms like Amazon, Chewy, and Petivity.com.
Nestlé Purina PetCare, founded in 1894, focuses on creating nutritional products for pets, ensuring that millions of dogs and cats receive quality care each year.