Not the spice rack, silly. The cats! I thought I was being smart when I started feeding them on the kitchen counter. I wanted to give them some ownership of the area, so they'd see all the mice coming up through the stove and make them go away. (Note the beautiful steel wool keeping the mice from coming up behind the stove. Now they just come through the stove instead of behind it!) That part has worked swimmingly. I got dead mouse #6 this morning. Note to self - start throwing the mice in the trash instead of the woods. I'm not entirely sure whether this is a new mouse, or an old one that's been re-gifted.Now that they own the counter, they think that they own everything on it, like my meals, which is a problem. Cats can be pretty stubborn, so it's me, throwing them off, 6, 7 times before they stay off. I mean, whose counter is this anyway?
You know how sometimes a project comes up and surprises you? I decided Monday morning that the spices really shouldn't be in a bowl on some shelves. They should be on a rack near the stove. So I found some stained 1 x 4 molding in the shed and got some angle brackets and ta-dah, it's a spice rack. It's not pretty, but there's not much in the kitchen that's pretty. Except the cats.
Yeah, it's hard to make cats understand that they're not allowed on the kitchen counters or the table! ESPECIALLY now that they've been fed there (I assume you've since changed that?).
ReplyDeleteSome ideas: spray bottle of water to shoot 'em with when they jump up, a banged fist and a loud NO on the counter when they jump up, and I've also heard that laying down aluminum foil helps keep them off those areas 'cause they don't like the feel / sound of it underneath their feet . . . although I've never tried that one.
I FIRMLY believe that cats can learn just like dogs can, so just pretend it's your dog trying to jump up onto the counter and do what you'd do to them!