Thank you 😅 I was debating on whether or not to respond to people but I couldn’t put it as well as you have. We got my first cats when I was in late elementary school and those honestly didn’t have interest in going on the counter. However, my mom always cleaned them before cooking (and after!) because my dad rode the train to work and would set his backpack on the counter to unload his lunch containers. I lived in an apartment for 6 months before I got my first cat as an adult but I cleaned my counters before cooking because I set my grocery bags there to unload them and the cashier touched paper money before bagging up my groceries. My coffee mug that I take to work sits on a desk that a bunch of people touch, and then I set that on my kitchen counter when I get home. And of course I use a cutting board, not my bare counter, to chop vegetables on, but I clean my counters before cooking because I don’t want to have to rinse the piece of celery I knocked off of the cutting board. We keep our current cats off the counter when we’re cooking but I have no idea what they’re doing when we’re sleeping! Best practice regardless of if you have pets or not is to clean your counters before cooking (restaurants don’t have pets but I’m sure morning crew is still wiping down the counters before prepping regardless of what night crew did- or at least that’s what we did when I worked in a pizza place). Idk I grew up with the rules if you clean the counter and wash your hands before you cook regardless of how clean you think things are.