Cats & Dogs: Cats won't learn...

When lecturing a pet, it doesn't always work first time. How long this takes will depend on what traits they may have. I suggest you try again but this time be a bit more patient. I personally haven't had an issue, however if you have mods in your game I suggest removing them and checking they aren't casuing an issue (Sometimes mods,especially outdated ones, can cause problems). Alternativly you can try repairing the game via origin and see if that helps fix the issue.

You’re not alone. It’s been over a year since your comment (and 3+ years since others) and this is STILL not fixed. I am about to delete my cat too and it bums me out. How is this still a thing?

Update (way faster than expected):
Not sure if this will work for you but I can confirm this finally fixed the cat jumping on the counter issue. After swapping between “lecture” and “scold” about jumping on counters a literal 20-50 times, I eventually got the music and notification that my cat had learned not to jump on the counters. Lo, and behold however, my cat was back on the counter within seconds.
It was at this point that I evicted my household and then moved them back into the house - if you move back in “furnished”, you essentially just return to your home. When the cat started jumping on the counters again, I repeated my “lecture”/“scold” routine and got the successful training message again after about 15 attempts. But this time... IT ACTUALLY WORKED. The cat now goes over to the places it usually would jump to and looks up at them but doesn’t follow through with it anymore.
Best of luck!

Details: my cat’s characteristics are glutton, fluffy, and clever.