Watching a Food in Catboard
How to watch foods, track their score and changes, and link them to your cats in Catboard.
Watching a food
You can start watching a food from its product page using the Watch button. Two conditions need to be met for a product to be watchable:
- The product must be monitored by Cat Food Central
- You must have a free slot in your watched foods (up to 7 at a time)
If either of these isn't the case, the Watch button appears grayed out, and a tooltip explains why you can't watch that product right now.
What does "monitored" mean?
Not every product on Cat Food Central can be watched. We monitor a growing number of manufacturer pages for changes to ingredients, nutritional values, and other details, so we can keep the foods we watch up to date. If a product isn't part of this monitoring, it can't be watched.
The Watching badge
Once you're watching a food, a "Watching" badge appears on its product page, along with the total number of users currently watching that product.
This badge also appears on product boxes and elsewhere on the site, such as in search results, alternative products, and other products from the same brand.
A product box shows either a "Viewed" or a "Watching" pill, never both. If you're watching a product, you've already viewed it, so "Watching" takes priority.
Clicking the "Watching" badge on the product page immediately unwatches the product, with no confirmation.
Your watched foods list
Watched foods appear as cards in your Catboard sidebar. Each card shows the product's image, name, brand, current score, and when it was last reviewed (covering its tech specs, ingredients, and nutritional values).
If the ingredients or nutritional values of a watched food change, the "last reviewed" line is shown in an attention-grabbing color. This highlight remains for 30 days from the moment the change was detected, after which it returns to normal. More detailed information about what changed will be added in the future.
If a watched food stops being monitored
If a food you're watching is no longer monitored by Cat Food Central, its card turns grayish and shows a message letting you know. The food stays in your watched list, nothing is removed automatically, but you're free to unwatch it if you'd like.
Food card actions
Each food card includes a few actions:
- Who's eating this? - link the food to one or more of your cats
- View Product - opens the product page in the same tab
- Unwatch - removes the food from your watched list immediately, with no confirmation
Unwatching a food also removes any cat links you've set up for it. If you watch the food again later, you can re-link it to your cats.
"Who's eating this?"
On desktop, hover over a food card to reveal the "Who's eating this?" option. On mobile, tap the card instead.
You'll need to add at least one cat to Catboard before you can use this feature.
Selecting "Who's eating this?" opens a popup listing your cats, each with its own checkbox. There's no "select all" option yet, so you'll need to select your cats one by one. Once you're happy with your selection, confirm to save.
After saving, a pill appears on the food card showing which cat or cats are linked to it. You can remove individual cats from this link at any time.
Notifications
If the score of a food you're watching changes, you'll receive an email alert letting you know.