My cats make an alarming amount of noise to wake me up at 5 a.m. to feed them, despite the fact that I never get up and feed them when they do that. In an attempt to solve my problem I found an automatic pet feeder. It has 2 compartments so that both cats can use it at the same time and I can set it for any time in a 48 hour period. In theory this is a fantastic idea.
In reality the cats can smell the food inside so they woke me up about 400 times last night by banging the hell out of it in hopes getting to the food inside. Even worse is that apparently in the process of banging the hell out of it they managed to jam the doors shut so they wouldn’t open this morning like they were supposed to and I had to open the doors manually after my alarm went off. I am going to try it again tonight and see if they have learned that the food inside is inaccessible and will leave it the hell alone for a while, but if it is a problem again tonight I am going to see if I can return it and get my $50 back.
I feel dumb now, but it would make me feel a lot better to hear about your worst purchase ever!
Here’s a recent one: My Goblin Mosquito Eater. Needs to be refilled with expensive, hard -to-find fuel every other day. Doesn’t catch mosquitos. What more could you want?
Worthless. :smack:
Off the top of my head, just about any relatively new gadget in the cleaning market. Swiffer Wet Jet? Sucks. Just can’t compete with the old rope mop and a bucket. Not to detract from the OP, but one of the best purchases? mop bucket
Those stupid containers that claim that you can cook pasta in them just by adding boiling water and letting them set. They do. not. work. At all. Not even a little. Not even if you drain them and refill them with more boiling water.
My mother in law bought me one of those. It came with a recipe booklet of other things you could make in it, like hot dogs and soggy broccoli. Tried it twice and got gluey, half done pasta both times. Now I use it to soak my delicates.
Worst purchase ever? Well, as I entered and signed into reception after my undergraduate convocation ceremony I was handed a small ticket. Asking what it was for the woman cheerfully replied, “oh, it is for a complimentary drink at the bar.” Staring down at the ticket in numbing disbelief I replied, “damn, this is the most expensive drink I’ve ever bought.”
The Cranium Super Fort (which was even recommended by dopers).
Complete piece of shit. The forts you’d build would never stand upright for more than 5 minutes. If you built a taller one it would just collapse under it’s own weight. And the thing was like $50. Got it for my son for Christmas and took it back to ToysRus the day after Christmas.
He was much happier with the $10 IKEA tent.
I can’t stop laughing at this! Your cats are so much more resourceful than mine was. She used to go and sit by the dish starting at 3 or 4 in the morning waiting for it to open, but she never attacked it, to my knowledge.
My worst purchase ever may have been my couch. It’s this godawful pea-soupy/pukey green, it has no support and because it’s modular it slips all over the floor. I thought the color would be okay but once I got it home I hated it. But since I own it now, by george, I’m keeping it. It’s funny – the friend who was with me when I picked it out loved the color, and still loves it. It’s one of the few things in my house that she wants when I die.
Yeah, that is kind of what I expected to happen. I did not expect to wake up and see one of them trying to unhinge his jaw so he could just swallow the box whole like a fucking snake.
I think the worst purchace that that I’ve ever made was buying my tounge rings from Hot Topic. Because I’ve stripped several of them now without even trying to and its pissed me off. Lol.
I love my Roomba. My husband was a doubter until he saw the thing work, now he praises it to anyone who’ll listen. Well, barring its occasional tendency to grab something like a bootlace and try to run across the room dragging a boot behind it.
When I had my last cat, I bought something similar, but simpler, and gravity-powered. You put the food in a compartment, and as the cat eats out of an attached tray, more food falls down. Worked like a charm, and no, my cat didn’t become overweight.
Ah, see, I think I have spotted a difference in our kitties. Yours knows it’s stopping point. Mine one day managed to open the closet where the dry food is stored and ate about 12 days worth of food in one sitting and then threw it up all over the floor. I woke up at 9 a.m. knowing that the lack of kittie cries to be fed meant bad things and sure enough, I was right. They don’t have the ability to limit their food intake at all.
I haven’t seen a ferret that does this regularly, but my current one has had “food issues” before. It started out with gorging herself so fast on the kibble that occasionally she’d get a piece stuck in her mouth or throat and cough it back out, then go right back to eating. Then I had to start fasting her before getting a medication injection or blood test at the vet, and after the first time when she got back, she ate so much so fast that she threw up. After that, she was a little better at moderating her intake.
However, she’s become used to me, once a month, waking her up at about 4:45 am so she can eat something before the 4-hour fast starts prior to her appointment. So lately when I get up around that time on a work day, no vet visit that day, I can hear her crunching away at the kibble - normally she wouldn’t be up that early. She’s just about always doing it if she’s been out in her “playpen” setup overnight (easier to “sweep” that for contraband food, as she’s ruined fasting tests when I’ve left her in her cage during her fasting time and she’s stashed food here and there), and a fair amount of time if in her regular cage too.[/hijack]
