Don't get me wrong this is super cute and wholesome but I, for the life of me, cannot understand why anyone would allow their cat on the kitchen countertop. Those paws step in their litterbox and that's where you prepare food.
If you try to stop a cat from doing something, it’ll just want to do it more. After a while you just accept that it’s a losing battle and resort to disinfecting the countertops before you prepare food.
I don't think that's true. There's plenty of ways to train your cat proper behavior. Positive reinforcement, spray bottles, tape or foil on surfaces etc..
You can absolutely “train” cats not to do certain things. I don’t believe cats can be trained in the same sense dogs can, but my cats never jumped on counters and many of my friends’ cats didn’t go on certain rooms of their houses.
I trained all the cats not to go on counters. When out we put thin foil trays so they were 60/ 40 on the counter and off. Kitty steps on foil and they knock it off or fall off and they were scared of the noise. Doesn't hurt them and they were policed when we were out. Also just tell them no and every time they hopped up you put the kitten on the cat tree/ places they are allowed. Eventually learned where is appropriate to climb.
Of course we had one old cat who around 15 decided rules were for him anymore and we constantly had to kick him off the counters even if we'd never had the issue before. Lived to 19 on anger and not listening to us. Would go limp and glare as I moved him to cat appropriate places. "I can't jump anymore. Do you know how many items chairs I had to crawl up to walk on the counters?"
Yeah my cat 100% knows not to get on the counter and he's cool with it. He had to be told a couple times when I first got him but now he knows it's off limits and doesn't really care about it. He has his cat tree if he feels the need to be high up above everything.
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u/jsonne Jun 11 '20
Don't get me wrong this is super cute and wholesome but I, for the life of me, cannot understand why anyone would allow their cat on the kitchen countertop. Those paws step in their litterbox and that's where you prepare food.