Kitty on countertop - Help!

In My Humble Opinion
1

About 5 months ago I adopted 2 kittens from the pound. They are 95% sweet and good.

But…

One of them, Typhon, gets up on the kitchen countertop. Sometimes it’s for food, he’ll jump up to lick off a plate that I’ve set down there. Sometimes it seems to be because he has a great hatred for the bread. He repeatedly knocks the bread down, shreds the bag a little, but doesn’t try to eat it.

I got a Ssscat (http://www.amazon.com/Premier-SSSCAT-Automated-Cat-Deterrent-Kit/dp/B0002XI7CI) and it works in a way, but it doesn’t solve the problem. You are supposed to turn it on and leave it on the counter, and if it senses movement it sprays air and freaks out the cat. That’s fine, but there are 6 people living here, and we get sprayed more than the cat does. I end up turning it off except for at night time, and then the cat just jumps up while we are in the other room or something.

Help! Typhon’s future is at stake!

2

Squirt bottle. Nail him with a spritz of water whenever you see him on the counter. he’ll get the idea.

3

Nuke him from orbit, it’s the … Aw, forget it.
Squirt bottle worked on most cat things I’ve shared space with. One would just get wet and do as it damn well pleased anyways.

4

Lay tinfoil on the counter. You can move it out of the way when you (and other humans) are doing stuff, then just pop it back.

5

Our cats do the same thing…all you’ll do is train them to not be on the counter while you’re present.

Just part of being the staff, I guess.

6

My cat responded well to the clap and hiss method when I caught her doing something I didn’t want - clapping your hands and going “psst” really loudly scares them, and a cat’s reaction to being startled is to bolt. My cat was easily trained, though. Jim’s cat was the kind that thought a spray bottle was playing. She eventually responded to clapping and hissing, too, though - they really don’t like getting startled like that. Since Typhon is a kitten, I think all you can do at this point is keep startling him off the counter until aversion therapy gets through his little brain (and try something like tinfoil or two-sided sticky tape, too).

We got one of those Ssscat things because my cat was bugging us at the bedroom door all night, and it worked beautifully for that.

ETA: Yeah, they’ll still get up there when I’m not around. I can leave food and meat on the counter for reasonable lengths of time and they won’t bother it, though, and that’s about all you can ask.

7

I can’t help you out here; I don’t see the problem. I specifically, intentionally, and purposefully feed my cat on the kitchen counter (actually, he has his own stand-alone counter) because that keeps the dogs out of the cat food. Cat food is much higher in protein than dog food (which is why they want to eat it), but it can give dogs kidney and liver damage if they eat it, long-term.

I suppose other suggestions might include putting marbles or some change in an old coffee can and every time the cat jumps on the counter, shake it to make a “oo counter bad! run away” scary noise.

Really, I got nothin’. Just sanitize the countertops before you start cooking and don’t worry about it because the cat is going to jump up there when you are not home and when you are sleeping. You are wasting your time trying to control a cat. Get a dog instead.

8

The thing with the squirt bottle is that you have to see them for it to work. Often I’ll heard a suspicious noise and go into the kitchen and just before I get there Typhon will jump down, with his mouth full of something, trying to look innocent.

9

This is not a solution to your problem I guess but you can get a plastic Tupperware type thing to keep your bread in? It’ll stay fresher in there too.

10

I have a dog too. She sure was easier to train! She’d eat the cat food too if I let her, but I put the cat food on the bathroom counter where the dog can’t go. Maybe this is confusing to them, they are encouraged to go onto the bathroom counter but forbidden to go on the kitchen counter.

11

Squirt bottle when you’re in the kitchen, Sssscat when you aren’t.

12

Keep food off the counter or covered completely. Keep the counter cleaned of crumbs and other food debris. Lack of reward may eventually bore the cat.
But don’t count on it.

13

Foil or sticky tape. You can get sticky tape at any pet store. It comes in long strips that are perfect for countertops (just place it along the edge). I used the sticky tape to get my cat to stop scratching the furniture. One day he went up to do his usually scratching routine and placed his paws on the tape. He gave me this look like WTF? and didn’t attempt to scratch that chair again for four months.

If your cat is like my cat, you won’t need to keep the sticky tape on permanently. He’ll learn his lesson for a few months, then probably try to give the countertops another go, at which point you put the tape back on temporarily.

14

If there’s a specific food they’re going after (and this can be something you’d never think cats would eat), don’t leave it unattended and uncovered on a counter. Cover it with foil, if you must leave it unattended, so you’ll hear it happening when the cat gets into it.

Get the cat down from the counter as quickly as possible whenever you notice them up there. A squirt bottle works. So does making a hissing noise at them (think Bilbo in Fellowship of the Ring); mother cats hiss at their kittens when the kittens do something wrong. Cats dislike sudden loud noises, so shaking a can with marbles or coins in it or clapping your hands hard might work, too.

What won’t work is punishing them after they get down from the counter, or if you find evidence that they were on the counter earlier. If you punish them after they got down, supposedly they’ll think they’re being punished for getting down, not for being on the counter in the first place. They supposedly don’t have the cognitive capacity to make the connection if you find evidence that they were on the counter and try to punish them for it later.

Make sure they’ve got high places where it’s OK for them to be and where they can keep an eye on what’s going on. A cat tree or tower is good for this. I got my cats to stop getting on the dining room table by putting a cat tower in the dining room. That satisfied their desire to be high up and keep an eye on what was happening there and in the kitchen without being on the table.

Make sure he has toys other than the bread bag that he can attack like he does the bread. If he has something acceptable to attack, the bread won’t seem so attractive. You may have to replace this toy every so often, when he shreds it. That’s life.

Some cats don’t like walking on foil. Mine don’t seem to mind so much.

Some cats don’t like walking on sticky tape. I found the sticky tape got in my way too much.

If anybody feeds them on the counter, that has to stop now. Never pet them or talk to them when they’re up there, either.

Make sure everybody in the house is on the same page about cats on the counter. A common problem is that one person thinks it’s OK for cats to be on the counter except when you’re preparing food, while another thinks that cats should not be on the counter at any time. You need to sit down and explicitly talk to your housemates or family members about this. Don’t assume they know that it’s not acceptable for cats to be on the counter- not everybody feels that way.

If one person is feeding and petting the cats when they get up on the counter, the behavior won’t go away, even if the rest of you punish the cats for it. Intermittent reward is what’s keeping all those slots players in Vegas there. It doesn’t discourage the behavior- quite the opposite.

15

If you have knobs on your cupboards then hang your bread from them. Take a piece of heavy string and tie it into a loop of approximately 10" diameter. hang your bread by wrapping the loop around the end and then back into itself. The weight of the bread will draw it tight. This is how I kept it from my cats and it also frees up room on the counter.

16

My sister has a scat mat, which gives a mild electrical shock. It works on cats and brothers. You put it on the surface you want protected and plug it in. It gives a mild shock like a static shock from a carpet. Kitties and brothers will learn to stay off the surface that it is laying on. Kitties will not figure out that it is the mat, but rather think it is the surface.

17

A lot of good ideas here.

It’s no secret there there is evidence left behind to indicate the kitties do what they please when “the others” aren’t looking. I had a lace table cloth on my dining room table which would develop a circular patch of black kitty hair on it occasionally. Ms. black cat lived with us for nearly twenty years and no one had ever seen her atop the table.

If you’d like to experiment with something which may work while you are absent you could try a small dish of cider vinegar on the counter. Most cats detest the smell of it.

18

Thanks for all the advice guys. I think the main problem is that the Ssscat and the sticky tape and foil all get in my way when I’m in the kitchen. But with 4 kids and a husband, someone is very frequently in the kitchen, so these things get annoying to have to put on and off. So we end up leaving them off.

And Typhon is smart enough to not try to get up when anyone is there. He’s sneaky and only gets up when no one is looking.

19

Good advice has already been given. Unfortunately, the cat has already self-rewarded when he found the plate with food up there. He will never forget that. :wink:

Personally, I’d just make an extra effort to keep all food/plates/bread/dirty dishes off the countertop, and see if he loses interest.

20

Lenny was brutal for getting on the counters at first. It turned out he had a wicked case of worms and always had a gnawing hunger-thing happening in his gut. Once we made sure the worms were really, truly and permanently gone, Lenny was easier to train when it came to the counter-top. (Of note, he also really targeted bread like crazy).

Secondly, Lenny got jail time for counter-top infractions. The clap-and-hiss wasn’t good enough. He’d jump up, grab, and run, knowing damn well nothing really happened except for the humans making angry sounds. But locking him in the bathroom for twenty minutes every time he got caught put a damper on his general shenanigans.

Thirdly, when we weren’t home we booby trapped the kitchen counter with baking trays, so there was no way for him to jump on there without setting off a huge chain reaction of cookie trays and grills falling with a clatter. Note: this scares humans too and once scared him so bad he left a pee puddle in the kitchen.

Fourthly, we got a spray that cats and dogs hate the smell of. Humans aren’t supposed to really be able to notice it, but actually some human noses can, so we sprayed some rags and left them on the counter rather than spray the counter directly.

Eventually, with all these combined efforts, we were able to keep the rat bastard off the counter, even when we weren’t around. My then roommate set up a motion triggered camera on his computer to watch the kitchen while we were out, so we’re pretty confident he avoided it.