Purina’s Petivity launches AI smart feeder to monitor cats’ eating habits

USA – Petivity, powered by Purina, has launched an AI-enabled Smart Feeder for Cats that uses facial recognition to identify individual cats and track their feeding behaviour, giving pet owners greater visibility into portion consumption and eating patterns.

The smart feeder is designed for households with up to five cats, using a built-in camera and sensors to recognise each animal and monitor how much and how often it eats.

Petivity said the technology aims to help pet owners identify changes in eating behaviour that could provide useful health insights. 

Kristin Slater, Petivity Product Development Lead, said understanding “how and when your cat eats may matter just as much as what they eat”, particularly as obesity is a common preventable health issue in cats.

The system tracks portion consumption, feeding frequency and patterns over time through the Petivity app. Owners can also remotely control feeding, set schedules, and conduct real-time video check-ins.

AI trained on 15,000 cats

The technology was developed using more than 21,000 real-world feeding sessions, over 1,400 hours of video and images of more than 15,000 cats, according to Purina data scientist Dr Natalie Langenfeld-McCoy.

“We spent years building a robust feeding behavior dataset,” Langenfeld-McCoy said, adding that the data enables the feeder to recognise individual cats and detect changes in feeding behaviour.

The feeder also connects with the Petivity Smart Litter Box Monitor, allowing owners to view food consumption alongside elimination data.

Petivity said the feeder underwent more than 10 design iterations, with 99.5% of cats in product development trials willing to eat from it.

The Smart Feeder for Cats is now available for US$149.99 through Amazon, Chewy, and Petivity.com.

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