Of course its normal. How else are they going to supervise and make sure everything is done properly to their exacting standards. I love the look on Milo in the kitchen pic. Clearly he takes his responsibility quite seriously :)
If you don’t want your cats on kitchen counters, etc then you have to be prepared to pay the price; the price being eternal vigilance. If you just place them back on the floor each and EVERY time, they will get the point. But you can’t be haphazard about it or they’ll just keep testing you.
And obviously, all bets are off when you’re not around. Unless you invest in a Scat Mat, don’t have any illusions about what goes on when you’re not there to supervise :)
But its just such a natural instinct for them to be up as high as possible. So with any of mine, I just kept repeatedly putting them back on the kitchen floor until they got tired of fighting it. But for the rest of the non-food areas, I let them perch wherever they wanted to.
They aren’t trying to just be ornery or something. They really do genuinely NEED some easily accessible high places in order to be happy and content so just make sure to provide as many as possible and they’ll be less inclined to see the kitchen counters as so important.
If you want to see some cute inspiration for this, there’s a site called “the cat’s house” and it’s amazing what a little basic carpentry skill can produce.
www.thecatshouse.com
There’s also a book (avail. on Amazon) about it with lots of pics and Animal Planet did a segment on it.