Reflections – Gilbert, the Guzinta

Gilbert Cameo

A couple weeks ago, between preparing his breakfast and mine, Spence fit in what he calls a “cook ahead” project. He grilled hot Italian sausage. After it cooled, he cracked the lazy Susan cupboard open to grab a storage bag.

Two cat eyes blinked at Spence.

Spence opened the cupboard door wider. “Gilbert! What are you doing in there?”

The black, white, and brown tabby didn’t answer. He hadn’t bumped against the door. He hadn’t scratched the door. He hadn’t raised his opera-worthy voice. Perhaps he wanted a quiet place to nap and, while the door opened momentarily, sneaked inside.

Gilbert jumped off the top shelf, stretched, and walked away with tail held high.

He’d explored the lazy Susan on many occasions. The first time he entangled himself in plastic grocery bags. He swished and rustled around our open space room then down the spiral stairs.

Gilbert also slunk into paper bags from Whole Foods. Handle around his neck, the cat tore about our log house with the boogie-bag chasing him.

Boogie-me chased Gilbert when he jumped onto the kitchen table, pranced across, and knocked over vases of girasoles or bottles of beverages with his swishing tail.

My late mother would have called Gilbert a guzinta.

Some folks use guzinta for long division. Nine guzinta (goes into) thirty-six four times. But Mom called me a guzinta. I went into things she preferred I didn’t explore—her purse, her dresser drawers, her closet. Hand slaps cured me.

If there were a cure for Gilbert, it would have been Spence’s table saw.

Mid September two years ago, I yawned and folded back my log cabin quilt in preparation for bed.

A BUZZZZ rattled my skull. The high pitch whir erupted in the basement.

Wide-awake, I ran to Spence in the open space room, where he relaxed on the sofa and bobbed his head in time with Todd Rundgren’s “The Road to Utopia.” The ear-torturing whine from the basement didn’t harmonize with Spence’s music. I yelled, “The table saw’s running.”

And I ran down the spiral stairs, past the room divider behind which our son Charlie slept in his man cave before his early morning shift at UPS—well, had slept—and through the basement to the table saw in the cold cellar.

Table Saw Spinning

The saw blade whirled away.

No one and no cat hovered nearby. But some critter, no doubt Gilbert, the guzinta, had started the machine. Leaning over the buzzing monster, I searched for a switch or plug to stop the noise before the ache growing inside my head cracked my skull like an egg shell.

Alas, more noise erupted. Behind me, Spence yelled, “Don’t get near that.”

I stepped back.

He pulled the plug.

Though ringing lingered inside my ear, the saw’s buzz stopped and the headache vanished. My head didn’t crack.

Spence fiddled with a two-by-four-inch button mounted on a panel between the legs of the table. The button was paw accessible for a cat reared on his hind legs. “Gilbert must have pushed the switch,” Spence said. He didn’t suggest our other cats—Ande, the ambassador, or Rills, the scrapper.

In silence, Spence and I climbed the stairs. Ande and Rills peered down from the top step. Gilbert hid.

Five minutes later, though, he crept step-by-step to the basement.

No worries. Spence wouldn’t forget to unplug the table saw again. Not with Gilbert in the house. Gilbert repeats his mishaps.

He still snags himself in plastic and paper grocery bags.

He still knocks objects over on the kitchen table.

He still explores the basement in search of adventure.

But not all of his guzinta adventures are troublesome.

From late spring through early fall, morning dew or puddles from overnight rain on the deck dampens my yoga mat when I stretch with YouTube Adriene. I carry the wet mat inside and lay it over the Adirondack chair in the open space room to dry.

Gilbert creeps into the created space underneath the yoga-mat tent and snuggles on an afghan our daughter crocheted.

No trapping doors. No dragging bags. No blaring buzzes.

He found a quiet place to nap. A cat cave.

Gilbert Under Yoga-Mat Tent