In 2009, my wife and I adopted an overweight cat named Nermal. The Humane Society was concerned that she didn’t know when to stop eating so instructed us to feed her 1/3 a cup of dry cat food twice a day. I tried feeding her when I woke up and got back from work. Nermal got so hungry that she’d wake us up in the middle of the night, hours before her regular feeding time. It was also hard to keep her on the diet when we were out of town. We’d end up overfeeding her in fear that she would eat everything in one sitting. I hoped technology could solve the problem in the form of an automatic cat food dispenser.