The cat is not allowed on the kitchen table while we’re eating, or on the kitchen counters while we’re cooking. And not on the stovetop, ever, or at least while we catch him at it.

We’ve given up on the sink, though, and declared it a cats-allowed zone. I don’t expect the sink to be clean the same way that I expect the counters to be – I may put food on the counters and then expect it to still be clean enough to eat, but I don’t expect that from the bottom of the sink. Now we just assume that anything in or by the sink is contaminated and not for reuse for human meals (unless we’ve watched it all the time).

Nysse will lick and eat just about anything that we put in the sink, from butter knives and measuring cups with traces of milk, to scraps of carrot peel and globs of oatmeal porridge. He manages to clean cheese graters and kitchen knives without hurting himself. And he can pry up the drain basket – with his claws, I assume – to get at the stuff there.