I would not like cats on the counters. I have a small kitchen and the microwave and dish drying rack take up the entire counter anyway. I have to put the rack away to cook. So there’s really no place for her to jump onto. And fortunately, my cat rarely gets on the furniture except the sofa and bed. (She also doesn’t bother human food and stays out of the Christmas tree. Yes, I am lucky :lol: )
We have endeavored to keep Visitor off the counter and off the table, but it doesn’t really work. He will stop for a while, and then start again. I will shoo him off by hissing at him and he will often get down at his leisure and then glare at me. DH gets upset but isn’t as “mean” as I am. He won’t get on the counters when we are preparing food. However, there are times he really thinks he needs access (e.g. this was a night when there were a lot of winter moths outside and he just could not stay off…)
Occasionally we catch him sleeping on the table. Bad kitty!
One of the very few times I heard my father yell at a cat was when I was a teen… He came into the dining room for dinner and the cat was curled up asleep on his dinner plate! VERY bad kitty!
I’ve also been in the situation where the only place I could put a skinny cat’s food where a fat cat couldn’t get to it was on the kitchen counter…
ETA: DH reports that Visitor has pretty much stayed off the food prep counters for months now. There is one counter that is not used for food prep he is always allowed to use, and that’s the only one he’s on regularly.
[QUOTE=GoodTimes;7924910]
Definitely no cats on the counters or dining room table. No dogs on the furniture or carpet.
I love them but there are boundaries.[/QUOTE]
No dogs on the carpet??? 
I get not letting them on the furniture - our two are not allowed on one particular sofa - but they’d be confined to the kitchen, bathrooms, and one hallway if we never allowed them on carpeted surfaces.
My cat died two years ago, but I had him from birth, so he was taught from the beginning that it was NOT OK to get on the counter. He also pretty much knew that he wasn’t allowed in the kitchen at all, though he would test that now and then. 
We moved around a lot, but in some places, we didn’t have much counter space in the first place, and in others, I was able to keep him confined in other rooms during the day while I was at work. He was a really, really good cat. Maybe he jumped up on the counters while I wasn’t there, but if he did, I’d be surprised if it was anything more than a few times.
Cats on counters skeeves me out, especially if someone neglects to wipe off their counter top.
No. in fact, this is a pet peeve.
no cats on counters or table. They don’t get people food, EVER, so they aren’t interested.
I don’t like pets that beg or get into my stuff. not allowed.
Yes, ours get on the kitchen counter. They are fed their wet food by the coffee maker end. If food is out, then no, no cats. If we are eating, no cats. And OP, Clorox spray is much cheaper and easier than buying those wipes. My kitchen gets scrubbed down daily with it. With five cats and five dogs, we do a lot of sanitizing!
Not cats on counters, or dining room furniture.
No dogs on any furniture, or in the kitchen.
My last cat never ever got on the counters, and I only saw her on the table once or twice. She was elderly and didn’t jump much.
The ones we have now are like flying monkeys. No horizontal space is safe. They don’t much hang out on top of the cabinets as they did last year, for whatever reason. (That didn’t bother me until they walked from one side of the room to the other by crossing over the range hood.) They don’t tend to get up on the counters while we are in the room, but I know they are up there prowling when we’re not looking. I wipe the counters down a lot! I do wish I could shut them out of the kitchen sometimes, when stuff is cooling on the counter. I need a pie safe to store hot baked goods safely!
Hell no. I love my cats but they have to keep their litter paws off my counters!
We’ve had a couple of climbers but all have proven teachable that the kitchen counters and dining room table are no-no zones. The handful of times we’ve caught them on the counters we’ve gotten the deer-in-the-headlights-look-of-oh-$*#()#-guilt and they instantly scooted down.
They can climb on anything else- bathroom counters, sideboards, sofas, beds, our desks, chairs, ledges… but NOT the kitchen counters or dining table. We pick our battles.
Yes, we do. We used to have the cats’ food dishes by the sliding glass doors that went from the kitchen to the patio. Then the ants invaded. One day I saw a perfectly symmetrical black ribbon going from the glass doors to our refrigerator. And it was moving! We started feeding our 2 cats on the counter and still do it sometimes even though the ants are long gone.
I tried really hard to train my cats not to get on the counters. With two it worked, the third was untrainable, I think she has a learning disability. When you spray her with water she just rolls her belly up and takes it looking confused until she is totally soaked but doesn’t move. It seems cruel and bizarre. I tried the compressed air with similar effect. She won. Then when my babies started crawling I realized that the perfect solution to kids getting in the cat food kibble was to just keep it on the counter, so now they are all allowed on the counter and my kids don’t choke on kibble. I clean the counters daily or more and when company comes over I put the cat food away and pretend the cats are super naughty if they jump up. “dutchie! What are you doing up there!” :lol: I make sure to pet her as I set her down so she knows she isn’t in trouble.
[QUOTE=HiddenAcres;7924854]
The cats are allowed on the counter. It started when the dog would not leave their food alone, several decades ago. They’ve always been good about staying off if anyone actually tried to cook something.:eek: No problem with cats on the counter.[/QUOTE]
Exactly LOL. Actually I have a pretty big kitchen and the cats have their OWN counter that is strictly for feeding and petting. They don’t seem to get on any of the other counters, either, which makes me happy. I did have one that I was fostering that I could TELL got on the stove (black hair on the stove - ugghhhh), but mine don’t or at least I can’t find any evidence of it, and I’m home all the time. I do think it’s gross (those feet have been in the litterbox) but as long as you wipe things down, natural immunity builds up LOL
One time the stupid cat did hover over a candle on the counter and singe herself. That got her a “this is why we can’t have nice things” scold after I rolled her around to put out the smoke.
I have one cat you insists that his water come from a faucet. The other cat only gets on in order to get up on top of the cabinets, in order to spy on all of us. Not really worried about it, just tell them down and they get down, and it always wipe down with cleaner. Hair would probably be on them regardless because the long haired cat seems to make endless fur “kittens” that I’m constantly getting up, so I would have to wipe down the counters anyway so I wouldn’t be THAT person with cat hair in the food. The only thing I insist on is no dogs in the bed. Love our dogs, just dogs stink a lot more than cats, and I’m not going to bathe them constantly,
The cats are allowed on the counters , but they don’t get on them. How weird is that? They do get on the table all the time though. We have been known to eat a meal with a cat laying on the table.
The dogs are not allowed on any furniture or the beds. They are farm dogs and just way too gross. The mud this year has been something else.
Cat is allowed on the counter, and in fact that’s where I place her when I have to pill her or give her fluids.
But then again, I don’t cook, so it’s not like we’re contaminating a cooking surface.
I have 5 cats. Interestingly, only 1 shows any inclination to get on the counter. He is allowed.
This is slightly off topic, but fits into the “cats will” category. We had a cat when I was a kid. My Mother was not nearly as lenient as I am. Cats were not allowed on the counters, the table or the furniture (except for one chair that was the “cat’s chair” where she could sit and look out of the window). It was the days of the stay at home Mom, so she enforced this regularly and religiously. That cat was very smart and soon learned to never be any place where she didn’t belong.
We thought. Until one day when we were all away for the afternoon. When we drove back into the yard, I looked at the picture window. There, sitting on the back of the couch, looking out of the window at us, was the cat. However, when we walked into the house, and into the livingroom, Mom thinking to catch the cat on the furniture and give her a reminder lesson, the cat was “asleep” on the living room floor. When we walked in, she got up and gave a big stretch. “Oh, hello, I’ve been sleeping here like a good cat, all the time you’ve been gone.”
We all had a good laugh, then, and many times when we were remembering good times. And, from that time on, the back of the couch was covered with a washable throw.
Helpful hint: do not leave the cat treats on a counter. We once left an opened bag of hairball treats there, Visitor got into them and ate them all, and the consequences were… messy. And dire. :eek:
Am I lucky? I’ve had scores of cats growing up and none ever were interested in going on the counter. I’ve never had particularly able jumpers… mostly fat fluffy groundbound types. But even the ones who physically could jump up were more interested on couches and surfaces where people sit.
