Five of the best bits of tech for pet owners

Owning a pet can be one of life’s great joys – a companion without many conditions other than food, vet bills and potentially regular walks, but bringing you a sense of love and loyalty.

Still, since so many of us have to leave our furry friends at home more than we’d like, it’s lucky there’s a whole heap of tech out there aimed expressly at helping pet owners.

From watchful cameras to automatic feeders, these devices can make it easier to keep your pet happy, healthy and safe…

1. Automatic feeders

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There’s no two ways around it: automatic food dispensers are incredibly handy. These machines ensure that you don’t have to be at home to get your pets happily fed, and they come in all shapes and sizes. You can still pick up versions that run on batteries and use manual timers if you like, but there are also plenty of smart and connected options.

Take the Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder (£59.99, reduced from £84.99), which is aimed at smaller pets and therefore smaller biscuit types. It connects to your Wi-Fi and lets you set up feeding schedules easily, and you can also connect to it remotely to drop biscuits any time you like.

2. Pet trackers

If you’ve got a cat that loves to roam, or you’re just curious about how much exercise your dog is actually getting on its walks, there’s a whole market out there now for pet trackers. These collar-mounted smart trackers log your pet’s activity (either through location tracking or step counts for cheaper models) and give you a much fuller picture of what they get up to.

One of the most popular brands in the space is Tractive, which has trackers for both cats and dogs (both priced at £31.49, reduced from £44.99, but you’ll need to purchase a subscription on top of this). It provides you with a map showing exactly where they went, making it perfect both for general monitoring, but also for potentially helping you find a lost pet.

3. Automatic litter trays

These devices were unthinkably luxurious a few years ago, and while they’re still relatively expensive, more and more people are picking up automatic litter trays for their cats. These large trays have built-in cleaning systems that shuffle away unclean litter and store it carefully for easier disposal. That means no more bending down to awkwardly shovel litter yourself, easily one of the worst jobs in the world of pets.

One of the most highly-rated automatic litter trays out there is the PetKit Pura X, which is fairly massive but has a great reputation for efficiency – but is still very pricey, at £399.99, reduced from £599.

4. Electric blankets

This might be about as old-school as pet tech gets, but almost any dog or cat will be your best mate if you start regularly using a heated blanket or pad during a cold winter. These simple devices have insulated wires running through them to make them feel lovely and toasty, and it can be cheaper to run a blanket than warm a whole room just to keep your pet happy.

There are plenty of options out there – while you could get a pet-specific heated blanket (there are even electric beds and pads to choose from, too), any product would do – like OHS’s Heated Waffle Fleece Electric Blanket in Charcoal (£30, reduced from £46).

5. Pet cameras

If you’re often away from home and you want to keep an eye on your pet, you could opt to install almost any cheap home security camera to check in on things. To make that experience far more rewarding, though, you could instead choose something like the Petcube Bites 2 Lite (£148.99, Amazon) – a camera designed explicitly for pets.

It has the camera you’d want, but also two-way audio to let you give your pet some vocal affirmation – and its real selling point is that it can dispense treats, too. This means you can reward your pets for good behaviour (like keeping off a beloved sofa), even if you’re not actually in the room.