Why the curtains are winning
A kitten climbing your curtains is not being defiant; she is following a strong instinct to get high, and the curtains happen to be the best route your room offers. From her point of view the curtain gives a grippy, climbable surface, a fast ascent, and a prize at the top — the rail, the window view, and the warm air near the ceiling. Shouting or spraying water may interrupt one climb but teaches her only to climb when you are absent, and it does nothing about the unmet need that sent her up there. The fix that lasts is competitive: install a legal route that beats the curtain on every point she cares about — grip, height, speed, and the quality of the perch at the top — and place it where the curtain route starts.
Building the better route beside the problem
Position is everything. Put the climbing post, cat tree, or stepped shelving immediately beside the window she targets, not across the room, because a kitten mid-impulse will not travel to a distant alternative. The route needs to be genuinely stable — a post that wobbles once will be abandoned for the reliable curtain — and tall enough that its top perch matches or beats the height she reaches on the fabric. Make the top spot worth arriving at: a padded platform or a hammock facing the window so she still gets the birds, street movement, and sunlight that were the real reward. A texture she can dig claws into, such as wrapped sisal or carpet on the uprights, gives the ascent the same satisfying grip the curtain fabric provided.
Retraining the habit, climb by climb
Expect her to test the old route while the new one is learning, and treat each test the same calm way. When she sets a paw on the curtain, lift her down without ceremony and place her on the legal route, then reward her there — a treat, a game at the top perch, warm praise — so the alternative is where good things happen. Play sessions that start at the bottom of the new route and finish with a treat on the top platform build the route into her daily map. Meanwhile make the curtain itself less available while habits shift: tie the curtains up out of launch range during the training weeks, or close them behind a panel, so the old path is simply not on offer at the moments you cannot supervise. Consistency matters more than intensity; one person letting her climb 'just this once' resets the lesson.
When climbing is a wider conversation
Curtain climbing in a young, healthy kitten is normal development, and it usually fades as the legal route takes over and she grows heavier than the fabric can hold. Mention it at a routine vet visit if the climbing comes with broader restlessness — a kitten who cannot settle, is losing weight despite eating ravenously, or is damaging the home in several new ways at once — because a whole-pattern change deserves a check rather than another furniture rearrangement. Also act quickly on the safety side if she has ever become tangled in cords attached to blinds or curtains, since those loops are a genuine strangling risk and should be tied up out of reach today, not at the weekend. Keeping the redirect routine noted in KinsLe Care Teams means each person in the house can see the agreed response and mark play sessions done, so the kitten hears one consistent message about her new route.