cat ruining cabinets

Hi, new to the site. Does anyone have advice on stopping my cat from "climbing" the cabinets. We rent and the cabinets are messed up anyway, but we are remodling a house and plan on spending a pretty penny on cabinets. She reaches up for the top of the door, then the drawer, hangs, digs her back claws into the drawer, gets it open, climbs in, then gets on the counter. Why can't she just jump up there? She also pulls the cabinets open from the bottom. A concern I will soon have with that, is I have a 4month old son and will soon be putting the child locks on the cabinet doors. I am afraid that will make her even more determined to get them open. Has anyone experienced this? and is there a solution for the back claws? I will just have to wrestle her to either trim the front or get the caps on. (tried that before ) If the caps are on, can she still get a hold and hang?? Thanks....

Definately trim the nails. To make the counter more unappealing, put some sticky paper on it with the sticky side up. I also found this mat in the pet store. It has little spikes like carpet runner. I am curious why she is climbing to the counters. If she just wants to be up hight, buy a cat tower or arrange a suitable place she can get up high elsewhere. Ther are also motion alarms you can buy. For me the sticky paper has always worked and they tons of stuff to climb.

Our kitchen is narrow and 'U' shaped. 3/4 of our cats are definitely getting on and a couple have slight arthritis. What I did when we moved in was place a set of 4 stairs (you can get them at any building ctre.) at the end of one side of the counters, painted to match (with a few little paw prints on purpose). They all use the stairs now, and because they're hollow, I use that (hidden) space to collect larger items for recycling, so it all works out perfectly!