Can a kitten be trained not to go up stairs?

[EmpressoftheMundane]

We have a new kitten. She is now 9 weeks old and has been with us for a week. I’d like for her to have the run of the ground floor, but she keeps bounding up the stairs. We have some allergies in the family, so I would prefer to keep her out of the bedrooms and to stay down stairs on the hardwood floors.

I also worry about her getting bigger and jumping up onto the kitchen countertops. She is very curious and likes the high ground.

Is it possible to train her not to jump on kitchen counters and not to climb the stairs?

Something I read about this suggests that if a predictable undesirable thing happens (you shout at cat for example) the cat will only learn that the bad thing happens if you are there when they are on the counter. They won't learn a general rule. For that to happen, something unpredictable, like the puff of air mentioned by a previous pp (or squirting at them from somewhere they can't see you) has to happen when they go on the counter

Cats are not exactly known for being biddable ;)

I do question how sensible it is though to bring a kitten into a household of people with allergies to it...

I’m not sure about stairs or counters, when I was in SAN Francisco one of the street performers had trained his cats to walk along a tightrope and jump through hoops.

I've been looking on Instagram to try and find the account of the cat with the buttons - there's a dog account whataboutbunny where the dog presses buttons to make a sentence like "Bunny go walk" or "where Daddy" but the cat mainly just presses "mad" and "food" - I believe if it had a "now" button it would also use that. But I can't remember what the cat is called. So they are trainable...

Billi speaks is the cat. Not convinced it’s a good idea tbh, they do well enough without buttons too

Interesting - I've always found with perseverance it is possible to train cats not to go onto work surfaces & not to sleep on my bed. But I do always provide a good alternative. So an equally high surface in the kitchen that they are allowed onto, & I feed them up there to encourage them to think of it as 'their' surface. And then in my room a really nice fluffy rug over a cushion in the window seat.

They also know that dd will give in and let them in her room at night, whereas I won't, when she's away they don't bother meeping and yowling.

I've lived with 8 cats over the years, and they've all learnt the rules though it takes some time. They will break them in extra tempting situations though, so I definitely wouldn't leave out eg gravy covered plates before washing up without covering them somehow.

I've seen the cat on YouTube that rings the desk bell and gets food although I actually think it is trying to get a room for the night and is only eating the food that is being proffered to be polite, a bit like I eat those little sweets on hotel counters while they're mucking about trying to log onto their computer.