How do I keep a cat off the kitchen worktops?

Being up high is not naughtiness, it is a core cat behaviour: height is where a cat feels safe and where it can survey a room. In most kitchens the worktop is simply the only high place available, and it usually smells of food as well. Fix both of those and the problem largely dissolves, which is why deterrents alone so often fail.

Safety

What you'll need

• A tall cat tree or a shelf near the kitchen
• Double-sided tape or a textured mat (optional)
• Sealed food containers (optional)
• Hob knob covers (optional)

Step by step

1. Clear the worktops completely, every time.No food, no crumbs, no butter dish, no washing-up left in the sink, no bread bin the cat can open, no bin bag on the side. If the worktop pays out once a week, the cat will check it daily. This is the step that does most of the work and the one people do partially.
2. Give the cat a better high place in or beside the kitchen.A cat tree taller than the worktop, a cleared shelf, or the top of a cupboard made accessible. It must be higher than the worktop, because height is the point. Put a bed or a blanket on it so it is somewhere to settle rather than just to stand.
3. Reward the cat for being on the new perch.Treats delivered there, meals fed there for a while, and quiet praise. You are not trying to make the worktop unpleasant so much as making the alternative obviously better.
4. Use a texture deterrent temporarily if you need one.Double-sided tape on strips of card, or a plastic carpet protector spike-side up, on the specific stretch of worktop. Cats dislike the feel and stop landing there. Remove it after a few weeks — it is a training aid, not a permanent kitchen fixture.
5. Never use punishment or a water spray.The cat does not learn 'the worktop is bad'; it learns 'my person is unpredictable and sometimes unpleasant'. It will use the worktop when you are not there, and you will have damaged the relationship for nothing.
6. Feed the cat properly and often enough.A cat scavenging the worktop is often on two large meals a day and hungry in between. Four or more small meals, a puzzle feeder, and a timed feeder for the early hours removes a lot of the motivation.
7. Manage the bin and the food cupboards.A lidded bin, food in sealed containers rather than in packets, and cupboard catches if the cat opens doors. A cat that has once found bread or a chicken carcass will keep trying for months.
8. Deal with the hob specifically.A cat can jump onto a hob that is still hot. Hob knob covers stop a cat turning a gas ring on, and keeping the cat out of the kitchen while you cook is reasonable and easily done with a door.
9. Be consistent across everyone in the house.One person who lifts the cat onto the worktop for a fuss keeps the whole behaviour alive. Agree the rule and apply it identically.
10. Accept a practical hygiene position.Cats walk on many surfaces and complete exclusion is difficult in an open-plan kitchen. Wipe worktops down before preparing food regardless of how the training is going — that is the actual hygiene control.

Tips

• The single most effective change is emptying the sink at night. Washing-up left overnight is a reliable reason for a cat to be on the worktop by morning.
• If the kitchen has a window the cat likes to sit at, put the cat tree there. You are competing with a view, and you will not win with a perch in a dark corner.
• Shutting the kitchen door while you cook and while food is out is a perfectly reasonable long-term arrangement and takes no training at all.

Common mistakes

• Using a water spray or shouting — The cat associates it with you rather than with the worktop, becomes wary of you, and simply goes up when you are out of the room.
• Deterring without providing an alternative — The need for height does not go away. Blocking the only high place in the room without offering another one rarely holds.
• Leaving washing-up or crumbs — Intermittent food rewards produce the most persistent behaviour there is. The worktop has to pay out never, not usually.
• Lifting the cat up for a cuddle on the worktop — It teaches that the worktop is a place where good things happen, which is exactly the association you are trying to remove.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask