5-in-1 puzzle board with different modules to challenge cats mentally. Place treats in puzzles to encourage problem solving.
5 different challenges
Mental stimulation
Slows down eating
Easy to clean
Some cats give up quickly
Lightweight can slide
Treats fall out easily
Engagement: 9/10 · Build Quality: 8/10 · Value for Money: 9/10 · Safety: 9/10
These are our own scores for the things that can be judged from the specification, the materials and how the product is built. They are not Amazon's customer rating.
A cat in the wild makes something like ten to twenty hunting attempts a day, most of them unsuccessful. That is the shape of a cat's working life: many short bursts of effort, spread across the day and night, most producing nothing.
A bowl of food put down twice a day removes all of it. The cat's calorie needs are met in ninety seconds and the remaining twenty-three hours have nothing in them.
That is the argument for puzzle feeding, and it is stronger for indoor cats than for most dogs. Cats given food puzzles have been reported to show reductions in a range of stress-related problems — over-grooming, aggression towards housemates, attention-seeking at night and overeating — because the behaviour they were built for has somewhere to go.
Cats give up faster than dogs and they do not persevere when confused. A puzzle introduced at full difficulty is a puzzle the cat walks away from permanently.
1. Start with the food visible and freely reachable. Lids off, sliders open, treats sitting on top. Let the cat win instantly.
2. Make it slightly harder once the cat is confident. Half-cover one compartment.
3. Progress slowly, over weeks rather than days.
4. Use food the cat genuinely wants. Part of the daily meal is better than a novelty treat, because it is worth working for and it comes out of the day's calories.
If the cat loses interest, you went too fast. Go back a step.
The five-module design is doing something useful: different mechanisms use different actions.
Sliders need a paw pushed sideways.
Lifting lids need a paw hooked under an edge.
Tubes and wells need a paw reached in — which some cats dislike, and which is harder for cats with vision problems.
Mazes need food nudged along a path.
Cats often love one mechanism and ignore another, and that is normal. A multi-module board lets you find which one your cat likes rather than buying four separate puzzles.
Dry food or treats are far easier in a puzzle board. Wet food works in the shallow wells of some designs and makes cleaning a great deal more involved.
Wash it after any wet food and at least weekly with dry. Residue in plastic crevices goes rancid and grows bacteria, and a cat will keep eating from a sour puzzle.
Check whether the board is dishwasher safe, and if so whether it is top-rack only — hot cycles warp thin plastic.
A board that slides across a hard floor is one a cat chases rather than solves. Put it on a mat, in a corner, or on a rug. Some designs have rubber feet, and if yours does not, self-adhesive furniture pads solve it.
Feed each cat separately when puzzle feeding. A puzzle takes longer than a bowl, and a slow cat working next to a fast one loses its food and learns that puzzles are a bad idea.
If one cat guards the board, that is a resource competition problem, and the answer is more boards in more places rather than fewer.
They give indoor cats back a behaviour that a food bowl removes entirely — a wild cat makes ten to twenty hunting attempts a day, most unsuccessful. Food puzzles have been reported to reduce over-grooming, aggression towards housemates, night attention-seeking and overeating, because that effort has somewhere to go.
Started too hard. Cats give up far faster than dogs. Begin with food visible and freely reachable — lids off, treats on top — so the cat wins instantly, then increase difficulty over weeks rather than days. If interest drops, go back a step.
Dry food or treats are far easier and much easier to clean. Wet food works in the shallow wells of some designs and makes cleaning considerably more involved. Wash after any wet food and at least weekly with dry — residue in plastic crevices goes rancid and cats will still eat from it.
Put it on a mat, a rug or in a corner, or stick self-adhesive furniture pads underneath if it has no rubber feet. A puzzle the cat chases rather than solves is a puzzle the cat gives up on.
Several that work well. Scatter part of the daily kibble across a room or up a cat tree. Use a cardboard egg box with kibble in the cups, a toilet roll tube with the ends folded in, or a plastic bottle with holes cut in it and the cap and ring removed. Rotating several beats one puzzle used daily.