Your layout is the real problem to solve
In most homes a counter-walking cat must make an athletic floor-to-counter leap that many cats skip. Yours has a staircase: floor to chair, chair to table, table to counter. That route changes the solution, because training aimed only at the counter ignores the two easy steps before it. Look at the chain honestly and break it where you can — push chairs fully in so the first step vanishes, avoid leaving a stool or box beside the table, and consider whether the table can shift enough that the final hop becomes a long, exposed jump most cats decline. You may not eliminate the route in a small kitchen, but every added difficulty lowers how often the trip seems worth making, especially once the counter itself stops paying.
Remove the counter's rewards completely
Cats repeat what pays, and counters pay in food smells, crumbs, butter left softening, meat defrosting, and warm spots near cooking. For a training period, run a strict clean-counter rule: food lives in cupboards, the fridge, or covered containers, defrosting happens in the fridge or a closed microwave, and surfaces get wiped after cooking so scent does not linger. A cat who finds nothing ten trips running revises her opinion of the destination. This phase fails on exceptions — one unattended roast chicken teaches that counters pay spectacularly but unpredictably, which is the hardest habit pattern to extinguish. The same rule covers the table, since in your home the table is effectively counter territory with the same food smells at paw level.
Install a better legal place to be
Simply forbidding high places fights a cat's nature; redirecting it works with her nature. Place a tall perch, cat tree, or cleared shelf near the kitchen where your cat can watch cooking, be part of the room's social life, and stay at satisfying height. Make that spot pay from day one: treats delivered there, brief play sessions ending there, a comfortable pad warmed by nearby light. When she chooses the perch, reward her; when she chooses the table en route to the counter, lift her down silently or lure her to the perch and reward that arrival instead. Over weeks the perch accumulates all the good associations while the counter accumulates none, and most cats quietly move their kitchen headquarters.
What not to do, and why consistency decides it
Spraying, shouting, and startling devices may move a cat in the moment but teach her the counter is forbidden only when you are present — and they corrode trust in the person doing the startling. Punishment after you find paw prints is meaningless to a cat, who cannot connect your anger to a walk she took an hour ago. Consistency decides everything here: one household member who secretly lets her stay on the table during breakfast, or feeds her scraps there as a treat seat, maintains the entire route. Agree the rules in plain terms — where she may be, where she is moved from, where her rewards happen — and hold them kindly but without exceptions until the new habit is firmly installed.
Keeping the kitchen rules identical for everyone
Counter training collapses on mixed messages more than on any feline stubbornness, so the routine needs to live somewhere every cook, guest-sitter, and teenager in the home can check. Note where the perch is, that counters and table stay food-free, and how a found cat is handled — silent lift, perch, reward. Give relatives you pick access to her profile via KinsLe Family Sharing, so chosen family members can open the profile of the cat who reaches your counter by way of the table.