How Can I Keep my Cats off Counters and Tables?
How can I train my cats to stay off tables and stop counter surfing? We’ve tried the motion sensor on a can of compressed air and a shocker pad. They still find ways to get on tables and
counters (e.g. pussyfooting around the shocker pad). We’re careful not to leave food, toys, or anything else interesting on the tables.
They’re good about staying down when we’re home, but as soon as we walk out the door it’s game on.
Thanks for your help!
Carrie
San Diego, CA
Humans are so silly. We basically live in two dimensions. We think in terms of right, left, forward and backward. Up and down rarely enter our minds. Heck, most of us can’t even manage a vertical jump that is one third of our body length.
Cats are not so restricted. Up and down are important to them. Cats that fail to patrol counters, tables, window sills and shelves do not (in their minds) properly monitor their territory.
Your cats have learned that it annoys their two-legged servants when they roam the counters in your presence. In the interest of household harmony they humor you by staying on the floor when you’re home.
You can employ several tricks to try to keep cats off of counters. The key word is try.
The most important thing is to eliminate attractive nuisances. Don’t keep food, plants, or other desirable objects on the counters. The same goes for fragile items. You have done this already.
Old school behaviorists recommend covering counters with aluminum foil or double stick tape. Cats supposedly abhor the texture of these substrates. In my experience this tactic does little to discourage cats from roaming the counters. It does, however, make your counters unusable.
Older-than-old school behaviorists recommend setting dozens of mouse traps upside down on the counter. When a cat jumps on the counter the mouse traps are triggered, making loud noises and scaring the cat–or breaking its toes if the traps aren’t triggered just right. I don’t know whether anyone has had poor enough judgement to use this tactic in the last 20 years.
You could try being creative. How about hooking up an infrared motion sensor to the most fearsome and dangerous enemy any cat ever had: the vacuum cleaner?
Or you could try being practical. I have found that the best way to keep cats off of kitchen counters is to lock them out of the kitchen.
You have questions. 
I never had a problem with my 7-year-old male cat jumping on the counters or tabletops – he knew where he was allowed and wasn’t, and stayed away from where he knew he shouldn’t be (at least that I knew of). Once my boyfriend and I got our kitten, though, oh man was that a different story! We were constantly reprimanding, “HEY! GET offa there!” and eventually, when she figured out that shouts wouldn’t hurt her, getting up and walking “angrily” toward her. That still works, but it’s a pain in the butt to get up every 5 minutes to pretend to punish her! Now, it seems, she’s trained us to deal with it: we’ve realized she doesn’t break anything while she’s up there, and we let her be as long as there’s nothing that could be harmful to her on the tables or countertops. And now my male cat has realized that we’re “fair” – if she can do it, so can he. Looks like it’s a cat’s world after all.
We had the same rules as Paula. As long as there wasn’t food on the table or counter, the cat could be there. I have many funny memories of our cat jumping on the table only to see me eating a bowl of cereal and trying desperately to abort mid-jump.
Also, the table gave her safe haven from the dog if she ever needed some kitty alone time and he wanted to play.
We did use the double-stick tape method. We got some of the incredibly sticky carpet tape and put a double row around the edge of the cabinets, right where their feet hit when they first jump up. Took about 3 weeks, and they got the message. About once a year or so, they figure out the tape isn’t there any longer, and we have to reapply for a couple of weeks. All in all, though, it was a good solution, since we didn’t want kitty litter tracks where we prepare our food. For the most part, the cats have the run of the house. Kitchen cabinets are the only forbidden zone.
An empty soda can with a few coins in the bottom has worked wonders for anything our kitties may do that is not preferred by their humans. They don’t like the noise and now if we even move to pick up the can they stop what they are doing and redirect their attentions elsewhere. They so dislike the noise that we don’t even have to pick up the can anymore to get the message across. It has saved us from the 5 am wake up call Sunny insisted on giving and Freya stalking us for her night time wet food snack. It really works!
The Kitchen counter was how we would go out side in the winter when we were out door cats (now we are stricktly indoor). So our servent had to “suffer” with us surfing the counters. We still do it. She tried the shortning on the counter but that did not work too well. Now we’ve just trianed ther to clean and disinfect prior to using the kitchen counter surfaces (it also helps that she hates to cook and so rarely uses them).
I got on the counters when I was much younger. Too old to jump that high now. But I was destructive… knocking stuff over and making a mess. Upside down tape worked on the FIRST try. Yes, I broke a potted cactus and got dirt everywhere, but I have NEVER again gotten on the kitchen counter!
One of my sisters now has the run of the counter. She rarely messes with anything up there and INSISTS she is necessary to anything mama does in the kitchen so she is a terrible nuisance if she’s not up there to see what’s going on… and if the milk is being used… mol!
HMmm…. well, ‘try’ is indeed the catch phrase. But “lock out of kitchen” is impossible in an open-plan house!
P.S. I just remembered a trick we used to use…. we took a piece of plastic carpet runner–the stuff used to protect carpets from soil. It has hundreds of stiff plastic points on the underside to keep it from slipping on the carpet. However, turned upside-down, it makes a very unpleasant landing surface for kitty cats…although it does no harm to them.
It is easily rolled up for storage, and is re-useable virtually forever, unlike foil or sticky tape, so it is a one-time expense.
We’ve been using 2-inch squares of packing tape, sticky side up, strategically placed around the plants on various counters & dressers. This kitty booby-trap has worked in general. Al though, cats being curious critters, they still have to “check” every so often. So we’ve had to leave the tape in place, replacing it occasionally when it gets dusty (or *ahem* removed).
The more I think on it, the more I’m liking Liz’s solution. I’ve used the plastic carpet runner under litter boxes in the past, and I know it’s easily cut with a boxknife… hmmmm…. 4-inch wide strips might do the trick… :D