One thing I have heard of for counters and such, is to put a few nice strips of double-faced tape in 'popular' areas of the counter- cats HATE the feeling of walking on sticky stuff like tape, and perhaps a few days of that will do away with the huge desire to spend time up there! Sounds like the tortie is doing her best to 'train' the human in this case, and that the tortie is 'winning'-- which might be bad for her, if people are contemplating giving her up. Smarter cats (and I certainly include Torties) can definitely get into 'battles of wits' with their humans on topics like this and they can be stubborn as hell- good luck!!

In my house, we eventually ran up a white flag and said to hell with it, the cats can be on the counters all they want, what's the harm? We lost and they won. Result is, they now don't spend much time there- the thrill is gone now, they're allowed to do it so it isn't so desirable any more.