Free feeding is the thing to stop first, and it is almost certainly what is making the gap wider. A bowl that is always full does not feed two cats equally — it feeds whichever cat is willing to defend it. The confident cat eats on its own schedule and often eats more than its share, the cautious cat eats when nobody is watching and eats less. Same bowl, same food, two completely different actual intakes. That is why one is getting fat and the other is not, even though you are buying the right portions.
Before anything about equipment: take the fat cat to the vet and get a target calorie number rather than guessing. This matters more with cats than with almost any other animal. A cat that loses weight too quickly, or a cat that stops eating for a day or two, can develop hepatic lipidosis — fat mobilising into the liver faster than it can be processed. It is genuinely dangerous and it is the reason you never simply halve a cat's food overnight. A vet visit also rules out the boring causes first: thyroid, insulin issues, a food that does not agree with them. Get a daily calorie figure and a target weight, and work towards it over months, not weeks.
Once you have that number, the problem becomes mechanical rather than medical, and it breaks into two separate problems that need two separate fixes.
The first problem is who eats how much. Separate meals in separate rooms, with the door shut for twenty minutes, solves this completely and costs nothing. It is tedious twice a day and it works. If that is sustainable for you, stop reading here — nothing you can buy does it better.
If it is not sustainable, which is most households, you need portion control that is tied to a specific cat rather than to a food station. That is the honest dividing line between feeder types. A standard timed feeder just makes food appear at a set time; whichever cat gets there first eats, and if that cat is the fast one you have made the problem worse. A microchip or RFID feeder only opens for the cat whose collar tag or implanted chip matches, so the fat cat can be locked out of the thin cat's food entirely, and the thin cat can be given a richer diet without the other one stealing it. That is the single feature worth paying a premium for in a multi-cat house, and it is the only one that actually solves selective feeding rather than managing it.
Two caveats if you go that way. Collar tags get lost, and a cat that loses its tag cannot open its own feeder — keep a spare and check the fit. And these feeders are not instant: most cats need a few days of supervised introduction, usually starting with the lid held open, before they trust the thing. Also worth knowing that a determined cat can still learn to pull food out of a partially open bowl, so the lid mechanism matters more than the marketing suggests.
The second problem is meal size and speed, which is independent of who eats. Switching the fat cat from dry to wet is often the largest single lever available, and it has nothing to do with feeders: wet food is roughly 70 to 80 percent water, so the same number of calories occupies far more volume and the cat feels fuller. Dry food is calorie-dense by comparison, and free-feeding dry is the classic way to produce a fat cat. If the thin cat needs the extra calories, the two of you can simply be on different diets once you have selective access sorted.
Slowing down the fast eater is the other half. A slow feeder bowl or a puzzle feeder turns a forty-second meal into a ten-minute one, and cats that forage do not beg as hard afterwards. This helps the thin cat too, because the fat cat stops finishing its own meal and then moving on to the second bowl.
The part that makes any of this work is measurement, and it is the part people skip. Weigh both cats weekly on a baby scale or by weighing yourself while holding them, and log it. Learn the body condition score rather than trusting the number on the scale — you should be able to feel ribs easily with a light touch and see a waist from above. Aim for slow, boring progress: a fraction of a percent of body weight per week. Any plan that produces rapid loss is a plan to stop.
One thing I would flag as a common mistake: buying a timed feeder, setting it to four small meals, and assuming the problem is solved. If both cats can reach it, you have built an all-you-can-eat window for the fast one. The feeder only helps if it is either selective per cat, or positioned so that only one cat can use it.
Practical sequence that usually works: vet visit for calorie targets; stop free feeding entirely; feed measured wet meals twice a day in the same place; if the fat cat still steals, move to separate rooms; if separate rooms are not realistic, get a selective feeder for the thin cat so its food is protected; slow bowls for whoever bolts their food; weigh weekly and adjust slowly.
I work on the manufacturing side of pet feeders, so I will say plainly that a feeder is not the first answer here — scheduling and vet guidance are. Selective-access feeders are genuinely useful, but only in the specific situation where one cat is blocking another from eating, which is exactly the situation you have described. If it helps to see what exists: https://xingliaoshop.com/pet-feeder/
Xingliao Smart Home builds smart switches, video doorbells and security cameras on Tuya WiFi and Tuya ZigBee, and runs OEM/ODM programmes from Shenzhen. Factory and ODM capability.
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