It’s the cats home too you know and the cat has every right to feel relaxed in it.
Yes there has to be some rules but there is never a need for punishment.
“If you jump on there I’ll squirt water at you’ is pathetic!
Do people who do that squirt water at their kids too I often wonder?
I have kids,cats and dogs and they are the most relaxed and well behaved lot you could ever meet.
How come you may ask?
The reason is that every member of our family whether human or animal is given love and respect and the understanding of their species.

Exactly right Gail, just as with children, time and patience is all you need with cats too.
Some not very good cat behaviourists still recommend spray bottles but they are not the solution because that is what is called ruling by fear.
It’s not the spray bottle which is threatening, it’s the person using it and it’s not the cat to blame if he can’t be trained by kindness and patience without resorting to threats, it’s the cat’s caretaker.

I know I may be in the minority, but I don’t like cats on the kitchen counter or the table where we eat; however, I’ve never had to resort to scare tactics. I’ve always just removed the cat while saying ‘Noooooo’ in a calm voice. Should the cat return, same thing. I’d do it as many times as needed. Sooner or later, it’s not fun for the cat anymore and he/she won’t return. It’s no different than a child with temper tantrum, except cats respond better, LOL!

Having Savannahs and Bengals its quite difficult to keep them off of anything. So we pretty much dont even try. However our intact male started spraying on everything high and low. We use a spray bottle to train our cats if they are exhibinting naughty behavior. The male now when i would spray him I would give him the cammand get down. So now he knows when I tell him to get down, he gets down. It only took a couple of sprays and if he doesnt listen all I gotta do is shake the bottle and he gets down immediatly. My son uses double faced tape on his counter and that works pretty well. He was having a problem with his cat breaking dishes by knocking them off the counter. Hes a bachelor and lives alone and his counter sometimes is pretty crowded. He does have a girlfriend now and she keeps the dishes put away. I believe he now has been able to remove the tape. We now have feliway so that seems to have helped with the spraying problem. Our cat Midnight can manuever any crowded space without disturbing a thing. She has never broken anything. Shes an amazing cat and was a stray we found outside. I believe the spray bottle is p-retty humane as long as you dont spray their faces or eyes which I am careful not to do. I aim for their back or buttocks. And if you use cammands like I did I eventually dont even have to use it.

The only issue I’ve had with cats being on benches is people who don’t let them be on benches. I’m sick of my cats jumping on the bench, and people who don’t even live here yelling, screaming and pushing at them to get off. There is nothing wrong with cats being on benches, my cats eat their 3 meals on the bench every day. I’ve never had an issue with it. We prepare our food in the same place, but we maintain typical house hold hygiene, so we are at no risk of picking up any ‘diseases’, and we do not risk cross contamination.

I would rather my cats be on the bench, than the grubby hands of some people…

I too had thought that the idea of putting something on the counter to startle the cat seemed wrong. Monty’s a smart cat and won’t jump up to anywhere if he’s not sure there’s a clear surface for him to land on. I may put something in his way, which he can clearly see from the floor, and then he will not go there. But that’s different from ambushing him with something he’s going to land on that he couldn’t see from the floor, that he wouldn’t normally expect to be there. I like the idea of giving the cat a place he can be. They do like to be up, seeing what you’re doing.

People who devise scare tactics to frighten cats when they try to jump on the counters make me mad !
I hate the thought of empty cans, foil paper or anything else noisy or slippy that some people recommended to stop them.
It’s so very easy to teach a cat where you don’t want him to go, you only need a bit of time and patience. Just lift him gently down and distract him with a toy when he first starts doing it, cats are highly intelligent and it doesn’t take long for the message to sink in that the counter is out of bounds.
Better still provide him with a high stool to sit on by the counter, our 2 present cats aren’t at all interested in kitchen chores but when we had Bryan he loved to sit on his high stool and watch us working.
It’s only sensible to keep the kitchen door shut while the cooker is on or anything hot is on the counter, again it’s easy to distract the cat into another room.
I really wish people would understand that punishing cats is pointless and unkind and ruling them by fear is very wrong.
And at the end of the day so what if the cat does jump on the counter, as long as he’s not in any danger, it’s easy enough to wash the counter down afterwards.
In fact cats are much cleaner than a lot of people are !

Monty doesn’t go on my kitchen counters because I have very little counter space and they are very full of stuff. Once I pulled everything off the counter, piled it on the table and wiped the counters. Suddenly, Monty discovered the counters and had a good time walking around up there! I think he liked it because it got him up more to my level. After he tired of it, I wiped everything down and put the stuff back. He still was going on the one counter by the microwave where there was an open space about his size. Jeff saves empty beer bottles for our neighbor who brews his own beer, so I put an empty beer bottle there, where Monty would see that it was in his way, and he stopped going up there. I didn’t let him walk on the stove at all, though he wanted to. I just don’t want to start that precedent for his own safety. He has never jumped up there, though he will stand on the garbage can lid and look up there. I move the garbage can whenever there is something hot on the stove, so that it isn’t a convenient ladder up to a something that could burn his little nose. Until I clean the counters again, I suspect he will continue to leave them alone. So that is my answer to keeping cats off counters. Just have a really cluttered house with very little counter space.