How to Keep Your Cat Off the Counter

As a cat owner, figuring out how to keep your pet off of counters and tables often feels like a never-ending battle. But don’t lose hope: We’ve gathered some expert tips on how to deter your feline family members from making your counters and tabletop their preferred household hangout spot.

1. Why do cats like high places?
2. Give your cat an alternative to the counter.
3. Try some simple training methods. 
4. Put any human food away.  
5. Make sure your cat always has access to clean water.
6. Be wary of using scents to deter cats from the counter. 
7. Avoid punishing and stoking fear in your cat.

Why do cats like high places?

It all comes down to feline evolution. Cats tend to prefer to stay away from any other creatures—like additional pets or even tiny humans—that share their space, and hopping up on the counter or table lets them keep tabs on any action below. “From an instinctual standpoint, cats are both predator and prey, so being up high gives them a good vantage point to survey their territory from above,” Tori Schlosser, certified cat trainer at Purrsuasion Cat Behavior Consulting and Training in Regina, Saskatchewan, tells Mental Floss. “In a home environment, it just so happens that counters may be the best vertical space they have.”

Another important reason? Cats can often find food on counters and tables—and a chance to sneak some bites of their human’s dinner is sometimes the only motivation they need to jump up and look around.

Despite cats being drawn to these high spaces, there are some steps you can take to try to keep your counters cat-free. 

Give your cat an alternative to the counter.

Make sure your cat has other tall places, like cat trees or cat condos, to jump or climb up onto. “What I like to suggest to people is to add some appropriate elevated spaces, the same or higher than the countertops in or close to your kitchen,” Schlosser says. Reward your cats by placing treats on the preferred places. 

Try some simple training methods. 

Sprinkling treats on a cat tower for positive reinforcement is a passive way of dealing with the issue. A more active option would be clicker training, which involves scheduled time to train and engage with your cat while using treats as positive reinforcement.

Mat training is also an option, especially if your cat likes to be in the kitchen and on the counters while you cook. Choose a designated spot or mat where you want your kitty to stay and drop treats or bits of food to that spot. If they leave the station, draw them back to it with more treats. Eventually they’ll head straight to the designated location, understanding that if they stay there, they’ll be rewarded with a tasty snack. 

Put any human food away.  

Storing food properly and keeping dishes washed and put away may help deter your pet from climbing up on the counters. After all, who can blame them from channeling their inner Garfield and nabbing some lasagna? “If we leave food out, even one time, and they get into it, they’ve now learned that the counter is where they can find food,” Schlosser says. “It’s not realistic to never have food on the counter, but we can be as careful as we can about putting food away and washing dishes.”

Make sure your cat always has access to clean water.

Some cats will jump onto kitchen counters to drink any water that drips from a faucet or pools in a sink. If you find your cat slurping from the sink, make sure it has access to clean, fresh water at all times; you can also consider investing in a cat water fountain that mimics a faucet. 

Be wary of using scents to deter cats from the counter. 

Cats have a very strong sense of smell—it’s about 14 times stronger than that of a human. You could try spraying a cat-deterring scent to keep your pet off the counter, but you have to be careful and make sure it isn’t toxic to the animal. Many plants, spices, and essential oils are dangerous to cats when eaten or inhaled. 

That said, deterring sprays are unlikely to even make much of a difference—according to Schlosser, cats may find hopping on the counter so enticing, even a bothersome scent won’t keep them away.

Avoid punishing and stoking fear in your cat.

You’ll find many suggestions online for keeping your cats off counters, such as lining the space with tinfoil and using automatic spray deterrents. But these strategies often involve startling or scaring your pet. Schlosser recommends sticking to rewards—rather than punishment—to influence their behavior. “I don’t ever suggest any strategies that are based off of startling the cat or causing fear,” she says. “I’ve heard of people putting cookie sheets on the edge of counters to keep their cat off, but when the cat jumps up, they fall, so now you have them falling, a cookie sheet potentially landing on them, and they are startled by a loud noise.”

She doesn’t recommend a spray bottle, either. “Sure, if you spray your cat you’ll get an instant result: Your cat will leave. But you’re breaking the bond with your cat, and, let’s be honest, as soon as you leave the room, your cat will attempt to jump up again,” she says. “They are thinking ‘mom plus spray bottle in the same room, I get sprayed,’ but ‘mom leaves the room, I don’t get sprayed’; that’s the connection they make in their brains.”

Because of the often persistent and stubborn nature of cats, keeping them off the counters can be a challenge. “By combining positive reinforcement strategies, you are likely to have success,” Schlosser says. “But try to make a habit of wiping down your counters before you cook, because even if you don’t see them on the counters, they might still be jumping up there when you are not looking.” At the end of the day, she says, “cats are going to cat.”

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