Feeders, Fountains & Bowls
Cat Mate C500 vs PETLIBRO Polar
One chills food with ice packs for a working day. The other refrigerates it for three, and is the most expensive appliance on this site to run.
Affiliate disclosure: we earn a commission if you buy through our links, at no extra cost to you. It never changes which product we rank first — here is how we're funded.
Everyone in this category says they tested twenty litter boxes. We have not tested any, and we say so. What we do instead: compile the published specs, read the manuals, and do the arithmetic on what this gear costs to run and how it behaves once there is more than one cat using it. Every spec is linked to the document it came from. Prices are checked daily — last verified September 25, 2026. Here is exactly how we pick.
Wet food is the hardest thing to automate, and there are only two ways to do it: chill it for a few hours, or refrigerate it for days. These are the two machines that do each.
What each one publishes
| Specification | Cat Mate C500 | PETLIBRO Polar |
|---|---|---|
| Cooling | Twin ice packs, about 6-8 hours indoors | Thermoelectric; below 50F within 4 hours |
| Published freshness | About 6-8 hours | Wet food up to 72 hours |
| Meals | 1 immediate + 4 timed | Up to 3, scheduled by app |
| Per-meal capacity | 11.5 oz (330 g) compartments | 7.4 oz tray, extra-wide |
| Power | 3 x AA, up to 12 months | 60 W adapter; 3 x AA backup for 12 hours |
| Food types | Wet and dry | Wet food focus |
| Maker's household guidance | Up to two cats or a small dog | See PETLIBRO |
Manufacturers' published figures.
What each costs to run
PETLIBRO Polar. A 60 W adapter running continuously for a year is 525 kWh, which at the EIA residential average of 18.34 cents per kWh is $96.40. That is a ceiling rather than a typical figure -- a thermoelectric cooler cycles -- but it is the highest running cost of any product on this site.
Cat Mate C500. Three AA cells, published at up to 12 months. Call it a set of batteries a year: a rounding error beside the Polar, and no socket required, so it can sit anywhere.
That gap only matters if you leave the Polar plugged in all the time. Used the way most people use it -- weekends away, the occasional long day -- it costs very little. Used as a permanent wet-food station, it is a real line item.
Meals and portions
The Cat Mate is the more flexible feeder on paper: five compartments at 11.5 oz each, one of which serves immediately. That suits a cat on three or four small wet meals a day, and it handles dry food equally well.
The Polar trades meal count for duration: up to three app-scheduled servings from a 7.4 oz tray, with the cooling pausing 30 minutes before each meal so food is not served refrigerator-cold. The tray is deliberately wide, which our bowls page explains matters for whiskers.
Which one for which absence
- Out for the day: Cat Mate. Its published window covers it, and nothing needs plugging in.
- Away overnight: Cat Mate if the house is cool and you are back inside its window; Polar if you are not.
- A weekend: Polar, on its published 72 hours -- with someone checking in regardless. Our leaving-cats-alone guide covers what binds first on a longer absence, and it is rarely the food.
- Two cats: neither, on its own. Neither machine can tell one cat from another, so the first cat to arrive eats both meals. Our microchip feeder page is the answer to that problem.
The gear discussed here
Specs are the manufacturer's own, linked to the page they came from. Prices come from a live daily check; where we have no verified price we say so rather than print a stale one.
Cat Mate C500 5-Meal Automatic Feeder
Cat Mate · Automatic feeder · Our score 8.0/10
#ad No verified live price right now, so we show none rather than a stale one. How we're funded.
Five sealed compartments and twin ice packs, running for up to a year on three AA cells -- the only credible way to put wet food on a schedule.
Published specs
| Meals | 1 immediate + 4 timed |
|---|---|
| Compartment capacity | 11.5 oz (330 g) each |
| Food types | Wet and dry |
| Cooling | Twin ice packs, about 6-8 hours indoors |
| Power | 3 x AA, up to 12 months |
| Suits | Up to two cats or a small dog (maker) |
Source: Chewy -- Cat Mate C500 Digital 5 Meal Automatic Feeder listing
Cat Mate publishes 6-8 hours of indoor cooling from the twin ice packs, not five meals' worth. So the honest read is that this covers a working day, not a weekend -- the 5-meal capacity is about portioning across that day, not about leaving the house for longer.
What the specs favor
- Handles wet food, which no hopper feeder does
- Published compartment capacity in ounces and grams
- Battery-only, so a power cut does not skip a meal
- Up to 12 months from three AA cells
What they don't
- Cooling is published at 6-8 hours indoors, so this is a day, not a trip
- Five compartments is a hard ceiling -- no top-up without opening it
- Shared tray, so it cannot separate two cats' diets
You are away overnight and feeding wet food. Read the published cooling window rather than the meal count: 6-8 hours is the number that governs food safety here.
How it scores
Scores are our editorial weighting of the published specs above, not a test result. They are deliberately kept out of this page's structured data.
PETLIBRO Polar Wet Food Feeder
PETLIBRO · Automatic feeder · Our score 7.7/10
#ad Price as of September 25, 2026. Prices move; we check daily. How we're funded.
Actively refrigerated rather than ice-packed, and the only feeder here whose maker publishes a wattage -- which turns out to be the highest running cost on this site.
Published specs
| Cooling | Thermoelectric, below 50F within 4 hours |
|---|---|
| Freshness claim | Wet food kept up to 72 hours |
| Tray capacity | 7.4 oz, extra-wide to reduce whisker contact |
| Meals | Up to 3, scheduled by app |
| Power | 60 W adapter; 3 x AA backup for 12 hours |
| Serving | Cooling pauses 30 minutes before each meal |
Source: PETLIBRO -- Polar Refrigerated Wet Food Cat Feeder product page
PETLIBRO publishes a 60 W adapter. 60 W x 24 h x 365 = 525.6 kWh, x $0.1834 = $96.40 a year at the ceiling. A thermoelectric cooler cycles rather than drawing full rating continuously, so the real figure is lower and PETLIBRO does not publish it -- but even at half duty this is the most expensive thing to run on this entire site, and nothing on the box says so.
What the specs favor
- Real refrigeration, not an ice pack -- a published 72-hour freshness window
- Publishes a wattage, which almost nothing in this category does
- Extra-wide 7.4 oz tray addresses whisker contact
- Battery backup keeps the schedule through a 12-hour outage
What they don't
- 60 W adapter -- up to $96.40 a year of electricity at the ceiling
- Only three scheduled meals
- Mains-dependent for the cooling itself; the battery covers timing, not chilling
- One tray, so it cannot separate two cats
You are buying it to save money over a pet sitter for a single overnight. At up to $96 a year to run it is the most expensive appliance we cover, and an ice-pack feeder covers a working day for a fraction of that.
How it scores
Scores are our editorial weighting of the published specs above, not a test result. They are deliberately kept out of this page's structured data.
Common questions
How long does each one keep wet food safe?
Which is cheaper to run?
How many meals does each hold?
Which should I buy for a working day?
Do either of them work in a power cut?
Sources
Read next
- Best Automatic Wet Food Feeders (2026)
Ice-packed against refrigerated, the published cooling windows, and why the refrigerated option is the most expensive thing on this site to run.
- Leaving Cats Alone: What a Feeder Actually Covers
Hopper, water and litter capacity converted into days, with a clear line on when a machine stops being enough.
- What Happens to an Automatic Feeder in a Power Cut
How automatic feeders behave during a power cut, which publish battery backup, and how to build a setup that fails safe.
- Best Automatic Cat Feeders (2026)
Hopper capacity converted into days of food for one, two and three cats, plus which feeders handle wet food and which do not.
- How Long Can Wet Food Sit Out?
The published cooling windows from three feeders, what changes them, and where the makers' claims stop and your vet's advice starts.