Help Required - Kittens Jumping Onto Kitchen Surfaces

[BusterJangle 10]

Hello,

 

Does anyone have any advice re the above please?

 

Kittens caught on numerous occasions jumping onto kitchen worktops and on the odd occasion the cooker (luckily wasn't on).

 

The bottom floor of the house is open plan, so can't simply close a door. Just wondering if there are any tried and tested techniques or products I could try to prevent this.

 

Thanks for your thoughts / help.

[parcher 10]

Persistence, unfortunately, seems to be the name of the game with mine. For youngsters, the whole house is a feline climbing frame. Don't feed them from the counter though (titbits). Remove them from the surface, put them on the floor with a stern "No". Eventually they get the hang of it but it is a bit of a battle of wills with cats! Oh and investing in a good anti-bac spray!

[vwkittie 10]

Nope, I've never succeeded in keeping my tom who is now around 4 off the kitchen sides. I just keep them clear and cleaned to avoid temptation and make sure to clean them down before cooking!

 

Some people say citrus etc is a deterrent for cats but personally I've not seen it have any effect.

[medusa 16]

There is no such thing with prevention with kittens jumping apart from separating them from the places that you don't want them to go- kittens and cats work in 3 dimensions and always will.

 

What you CAN do is to be very persistent with putting them down onto the floor and saying 'down' when you do it (not in a scary way, just gently moving them down and talking to them). Over time they will learn both that you don't want them on the surfaces and the meaning of 'down' so eventually you will be able to tell them and they will get down of their own accord (don't hold your breath though- we're talking months rather than weeks).

 

If they start to do something really hazardous then the most helpful thing that you could do would be to get hold of a plant mister or similar and give them a quick squirt of that whilst you say 'no'. Getting wet is harmless but a bit unpleasant so they are likely to change their minds about it pretty quickly, but it needs to be done very sparingly and only in situations where you REALLY need them to stop doing something, like if they started going up on the cooker whilst it was on. To be honest, kittens' senses are so good that I doubt that they would step out on to the cooker while it was on though, because even if they were blind they would sense the temperature and know that it was dangerous.

 

The other things that you can do to reduce the amount of time that kittens try to get up on the work surface include:

 

Never leave anything that looks or smells interesting on the work surface. If you need to leave meat or fish out to defrost or come to room temperature then do it in the microwave or cold oven. Dirty washing up smells really interesting too, so make sure that there's nothing for them to want to be checking out.

 

Remove tables, chairs and other kitten shaped steps away from the work surface. That may not work as most kittens can jump as far as the work surface from the floor by the age of 16ish weeks anyway, but it makes it a little harder.

 

Leave things which aren't interesting but do make a barrier along the edge of the work surface, like pans, bottles and the like. If they can't see somewhere on which to land then they are unlikely to jump.

 

If you want to have a temporary campaign to deter them jumping then you could coat the front edge and top of the work surface in either kitchen foil or sticky back plastic with the sticky side outwards. Both are really unpleasant on the paws and most kittens go a long way to avoid getting their pads on them.

 

All of these measures may come to nothing though- I had a horribly confident tom cat who could jump as far as the top of the wall units off the floor without anything else to jump from, who didn't have a problem with getting wet and who would merrily jump on top of other stuff (which he then chucked off on to the floor to make space for himself). He was a bit of a sod though, including chewing cables, opening doors, jumping out of windows, jumping in through neighbours' windows and all sorts of other lovely tricks

[midgecat 10]

All of these measures may come to nothing though- I had a horribly confident tom cat who could jump as far as the top of the wall units off the floor without anything else to jump from, who didn't have a problem with getting wet and who would merrily jump on top of other stuff (which he then chucked off on to the floor to make space for himself). He was a bit of a sod though, including chewing cables, opening doors, jumping out of windows, jumping in through neighbours' windows and all sorts of other lovely tricks

 

made me laugh ;D

 

i was advised to cover stuff in tin foil that i didn't want jango touching - he's also cable chewer. i unrolled some foil .... went off to get the scissors, got distracted, came back to find jango and two of my foster kittens fast asleep on the piece of foil. sigh.

 

often with cats its more about us learning acceptance and to live around the annoying things they do.

[medusa 16]

made me laugh ;D

 

i was advised to cover stuff in tin foil that i didn't want jango touching - he's also cable chewer. i unrolled some foil .... went off to get the scissors, got distracted, came back to find jango and two of my foster kittens fast asleep on the piece of foil. sigh.

 

often with cats its more about us learning acceptance and to live around the annoying things they do.

 

I was advised to try coating the wires in Tabasco to stop Tico chewing them. All that resulted in was a cat who would descend from anywhere in the house to nosedive into a bowl of chilli

[lady_l 10]

you gotta love em ey !

[Bluefeline 10]

Hello,

 

Does anyone have any advice re the above please?

 

Kittens caught on numerous occasions jumping onto kitchen worktops and on the odd occasion the cooker (luckily wasn't on).

 

The bottom floor of the house is open plan, so can't simply close a door. Just wondering if there are any tried and tested techniques or products I could try to prevent this.

 

Thanks for your thoughts / help.

 

Water pistals are what you need. It's only water so it doesn't hurt them and it works.

[shorehamview 10]

Water pistals are what you need. It's only water so it doesn't hurt them and it works.

We had two kittens when I was a kid, and we tried the water pistol method.

 

What we ended up with was two cats who loved getting squirted, and a kitchen that, thanks to very enthusiastic squirting from me and my brother, looked like a water main had burst. My mum ended up banning water pistols from the house.......

[BusterJangle 10]

Thanks all for your advice - much appreciated.

[Ethella 14]

I just kept saying the word 'no' (firmly) when my cat was a kitten (and put him back onto the floor) every time he went anywhere I didn't want him to go (kitchen tops, table etc). It took a few months to get through to him, and now he very rarely goes onto kitchen tops etc, although he still tries it on every now and then just keep me on my toes

 

Even though he is now 7, I'm still working on the word 'stay' when we're outside in the hope of stopping him from running in front of cars when he sees me !

[midgecat 10]

I was advised to try coating the wires in Tabasco to stop Tico chewing them. All that resulted in was a cat who would descend from anywhere in the house to nosedive into a bowl of chilli

 

HA! I've had same suggested to me. It kind of sounds a good idea until you realise just how many yards of wire there are in the house ......... and how incredibly messy coating them all with tabasco would be. So we now have yards and yards of cable tidy covers on every wire in sight. Toilet/kitchen towel inner tubes also make good cheaper wire protectors.

 

Just remind me again why we have them?