Elephi

by Jean Stafford

  Elephi Pelephi

  Well-Known Cat Formerly Kitten

  Elephi

  THE CAT WITH THE HIGH IQ

  Jean Stafford

  Illustrated by Erik Blegvad

  Dover Publications, Inc.

  Mineola, New York

  For Jeannie and Joey Charoux

  Copyright

  Text copyright © 1962, renewed 1990 by the Estate of Jean Stafford.

  Illustrations copyright © 1962, renewed 1990 by the Estate of Erik Blegvad

  All rights reserved.

  Bibliographical Note

  Elephi: The Cat with the High IQ, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 2017, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Dell Publishing Co., Inc., New York, in 1962. An illustration by Erik Blegvad that did not appear in the original publication is included on the inside covers of this Dover edition.

  International Standard Book Number

  ISBN-13: 978-0-486-81426-1

  ISBN-10: 0-486-81426-2

  Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

  81426201 2017

  www.doverpublications.com

  Elephi Pelephi Well-Known Cat Formerly Kitten sat in the bay window watching the snow. He was alone and he was lonesome. Mr. and Mrs. Cuckoo, with whom he shared his apartment, were both out. Mr. Cuckoo was at his rare book shop and Mrs. Cuckoo was at the ten cent store buying Christmas wrappings and ribbon.

  Earlier, Elephi had sat on the top of a chest of drawers supervising Madella, who ran the vacuum cleaner, as she got ready to go home. She put on her green coat and her green hat with a feather in it, her woolly taffy-colored scarf and her fleece-lined boots and then she pulled the string that turned out the light in the back hall. She said, “You be good, hear? Bye-bye, Elephi, see you tomorrow.” And she was gone.

  The first thing Elephi did as soon as the door was closed was to leap up and catch the end of the string and turn the light on again.

  After that, he moseyed into the kitchen and nibbled at the leaves of the sweet-potato vine in the window sill. He jumped into the sink and caught a drop of water from the faucet with his tongue. He opened a cupboard door and pulled out a roll of paper towels which he unrolled like a carpet, a bumpy and unfinished-looking carpet, to be sure, but better than none.

  Then he went into the bathroom and arranged himself in the wash basin for a nap (it was exactly the right shape for the Curled Cat position—paws tucked in, tip of tail touching tip of nose) but he found that he wasn’t sleepy.

  So he made a tour of the dining room where he found his own personal walnut. He played hockey with it until it hid.

  Next he went into the living room to look through the window at the children leaving the nursery school at the Presbyterian church across the street. They were all bundled up in red snow suits and mittens and peaked hoods and they made noises like birds as they trudged through the snow with their mothers.

  When the last child disappeared, there was nothing left for Elephi to do but watch the gentle snowflakes whirling and twirling among the spires of the church and the tops of the bare trees. He grew thoughtful.

  He wished he had a friend near his own age, a cat or a boy or a horse. He liked the Cuckoos, but they were old enough to be his great-grandparents, more than old enough. And, also, they were cuckoo.

  Their name was really Moneypenny, but he called them Cuckoo because that’s what they were. To begin with, they had given him such a silly name, Elephi. Who in the wide world ever heard of a cat named Elephi? The Cuckoos claimed they did. They said they had met a marmalade torn by that name at a hotel in Delphi in Greece and had become good friends with him. (This cat had loved potato chips and goat cheese.) That was all very well except that Elephi II was an American, born in New York City, of parents whose families had been in this country for thousands of generations. Indeed, one of his ancestors, Felix Oglethorpe by name, had been Mouser-in-Chief for George Washington’s barn at Mount Vernon. If Elephi had been naming himself, he would have picked something made in the U.S.A., something like Bill or O’Reilly or Huckleberry. Moreover, he didn’t look anything at all like that foreign orange cat, for he wore a formal black suit with a white shirt and white underclothes and short white gloves. His whiskers were long and his large eyes were very dark.

  His full name, Elephi Pelephi Well-Known Cat Formerly Kitten, had been given to him when he came of age on his first birthday, December 15, just a week ago. He understood the Formerly Kitten part of it because, of course, he was grown up, but he was not Well-Known and he knew he wasn’t. His name wasn’t even listed in the telephone directory nor had it ever appeared in the Daily News.

  All the same, his birthday party had been so much fun that he didn’t begrudge the Cuckoos this particular cuckooness. They had given him a felt sombrero filled with catnip, a ball with a jingle bell inside, and a green rubber mouse. He had chicken for dinner. All evening, after he had chewed up the hat and had lost the ball with the bell and had cornered the mouse under a footstool, the Cuckoos played with him. They threw corks and wadded-up paper for him to fetch and bring back to them. Friends of the Cuckoos said he must have learned this trick of retrieving from a hunting dog, but he hadn’t. He had been born knowing a great many useful things. For instance, he had been turning the back hall light off and on ever since he was a mere baby. And anyhow, he didn’t know any dogs and didn’t think he wanted to. Often he watched the poodles and dachshunds of the neighborhood out on their walks up and down Fifth Avenue and he thought they were a clumsy lot. Clumsy, and show-offs too, with their vulgar barking and their noisy threats to eat each other up.

  Oh, he had really nothing to complain about, Elephi told himself as he sat there watching the snow. For one thing, he wasn’t a dog.

  And the apartment was big and it had plenty of high places to jump to—bookcases, mantelpieces, china closets. And places to hide—spaces back of desks and under chairs and behind books and inside the umbrella stand. There were ferns and geraniums to pounce at and window shades to yank up and curtain pulls to be used as punching bags. There were countless objects to be pushed off tables: letter openers, paperweights, a marble egg, ash trays, two birds made of cow horn, three giraffes made of wood, a silver pig, a copper sheep bell. When he wanted to see how good looking he was, there were mirrors all over the place to show him to himself. Then, besides the wash basin, there were other excellent beds under lamps, on radiators, on a camel saddle (why the Cuckoos thought they needed a camel saddle on lower Fifth Avenue, he could not imagine, but there it was in the living room), in a laundry basket, and in a wooden salad bowl.

  On the whole, the food was good, and there was plenty of it. He had an egg yolk for breakfast to keep his clothes shiny, and for dinner he sometimes had liver (that was lovely) and sometimes kidney (very nice too—chewy, you know) and sometimes codfish (this was the best of all) and sometimes a kind of hash out of a can (filling but not much fun) and once in a great while (as on his birthday) beautiful chicken.

  Elephi did not drink water or milk in the usual way out of a saucer. Instead, he dipped his front paws, first one and then the other, into a glass or a cream pitcher and licked off the liquid. It tasted twice as good that way. In a manner of speaking, he quenched his thirst and washed his feet at the same time.

  He had a good life, he admitted. All the same, it would be a much better one if there was somebody young in the house to keep him company. What grand times he could have if there was another cat to wrestle with! They could have races up and down the long halls and hurdle-jumping in the living room, using the chairs and sofas as obstacles. They could have boxing matches and games of hide-and-seek, Cops and Robbers, Run Sheep Run. He sighed, feeling underprivileged.

  Elephi Pelephi Well-Kn
own Cat Formerly Kitten sighed again and started to close his eyes in sorrow. But just then the mounted policemen came down Fifth Avenue on their way to the stable. Every day at this same time they passed in front of the church and Elephi loved to watch the proud, official horses. Today great clouds of steam came out of their noses and their riders, the policemen, were red and blue in the face from the cold.

  By now the streets were slick with snow and the taxicabs and the lubberly busses swerved and zigzagged and grumbled and groaned. The wind had come up and as Elephi watched, it turned a blue umbrella inside out. The lady who had been under it looked puzzled, as if to say, “What do you do with an inside-out umbrella?” Finally she stuck it in the rubbish basket on the corner and it looked ridiculous. It looked like somebody with a dozen legs who had fallen headlong into the basket and couldn’t get out.

  A small white car that had been creeping down the Avenue began to skid. It skidded around the corner into the side street by the entrance to the nursery school and there it stopped. Elephi could hear it trying to start again. The noise it made was a cross between a scream and a moan with a whimper in the middle, a most mournful sound. Its rear wheels spun wildly, churning up the snow, and the faster the wheels went, the more woebegone grew the cry. But it was plainly stuck for good, poor thing; it could not have budged if its life depended on it. Elephi would not have felt so sorry if the car had not been so extremely small. It was no longer than a bathtub and not much taller.

  Presently the left-hand door of the car was flung open and out got a perfectly enormous man wearing a perfectly enormous raccoon coat. Not only was he remarkably fat but he was also so tall that his head must have been pressed against the top of the car. There couldn’t have been room for anything else except him on the front seat, not so much as a piece of paper or a toothpick. It was as if a hippopotamus had got into the Cuckoos’ bath-tub. He must have been very uncomfortable, thought Elephi. But the car must have been quite as uncomfortable. A man of that size and shape had no right to drive an automobile designed for somebody eight or nine years old. Elephi growled indignantly, taking sides with the car. The man wore a black beard, too, and his face was red with wrath. He called the car dreadful names. He opened up its mouth and looked inside and hollered worse ones.

  The awful brute slapped the car and he kicked it and then he went flouncing down the street, looking back every now and again, shouting and shaking his fist.

  What a cad!

  The car sat there, silent and motionless, tired to death. The snow piled up thickly around its wheels. The wind wailed and the sky began to darken and Elephi shivered although his coat was warm. He hoped that help would come for the car before night fell. It would be scary for it to be forsaken in the storm.

  But no one came. The street lights flashed on and so did the cheerful red and green lights on the Christmas trees in the church yard. The snow circled clockwise and then counterclockwise and it put a hat on the white car’s head and a smothering mask on its nose. Soon, if this kept up, the car would be buried alive.

  Usually when Elephi heard the Cuckoos at the door, he went into the hall to greet them. But today when Mrs. Cuckoo came in, he was still in the bay window, and it wasn’t until she had turned on the lamps and called, “Cat? Oh, cat, cat, where are you?” that he jumped down and went to welcome her and make her feel at home.

  For five or ten minutes he was distracted from the plight of the car as he helped Mrs. Cuckoo undo her bundles. He carried some of the string into the bedroom and some of it into the bathroom. He tore up the cellophane and put bits of it in handy places. And then he got into a brown paper bag that she had emptied and clawed his way through the bottom of it. He could much more easily have got out of it the way he had entered, but that would have been a lazy thing to do.

  By and by Elephi went back to the window. The car was still there and now it looked like a solid hill of snow.

  Mrs. Cuckoo went into the kitchen and found the paper towel rug and she cried, “Elephi Pelephi! I declare I have never in all my livelong days known anyone more vexatious. Come here this minute!” Everyone knows that cats don’t take orders. (Another advantage in being a cat, thought Elephi. Dogs had to “Get off the sofa!” “Heel!” “Sit!” whereas cats did what they wanted when they wanted and took their own sweet time.) Mrs. Cuckoo came into the living room and scratched him behind the ears.

  “Villainous witch’s companion,” she said, massaging his shoulders. “Why aren’t you purring, Pelephi El? And what are you looking at?” He would have been glad to tell her if he had known how, and she might have rescued the car in some way or other. But all he could do was to look up into her face and meow.

  Mrs. Cuckoo turned on the radio and the weather man said that there were already fifteen inches of snow and there was no relief in sight. It was going to be very cold, the man said, and the wind was from the west at forty miles an hour. Suddenly Elephi howled. He couldn’t help it. His mouth opened of its own accord and an amazing howl came out. Mrs. Cuckoo snapped off the radio and looked at him closely.

  “What is your problem, my dear friend?” she asked him earnestly. “Are you hungry? Or are you sick?” and in reply, he howled again. He began to shudder and he jumped down from the window seat, ran across the room, leaped onto a table and assumed the Curled Cat position around the base of a lamp. What if he were out in the snow, deserted by his friends? The look of the cold car had made him feel as if his own bones had turned to icicles.

  “A penny ... or rather, a million dollars for your secret thoughts,” said Mrs. Cuckoo and stroked his head-bone fondly. “Howl like a monster one minute, purr like an angel the next. You make no sense.” She shrugged her shoulders and went into the kitchen to cook Mr. Cuckoo’s dinner.

  Elephi, the Prominent Cat of 43 Fifth Avenue, wanted very much to go to sleep and dream about the springtime when the Presbyterians’ trees were in leaf and the Cuckoos bought armloads of lilacs from the Italian man with the pushcart. He wanted to sleep and dream so that he could forget about the car and how cold it was. But he was wide awake. He changed his position and moved some of Mr. Cuckoo’s rare books that were in his way. He stretched. He yawned. He counted mice. But he could not go to sleep.

  “Rats!” said restless Elephi.

  If there were only some way to get out of the apartment, and out of the building, and across the street, he might be able to tunnel a passage through the snowdrifts and somehow get into the car—he was clever at opening doors if they weren’t locked. He would warm the inside of the car and purr to it. Or, rather, purr to him, for now he thought of the car as Whitey, the Orphan of the Storm. And he would remain there, purring, until somebody came to take the poor waif home.

  But, alas, Elephi P. Cat was not allowed out of the apartment because the Cuckoos had an idea that he might go travelling and get lost in Brooklyn or in the Radio City Music Hall. Or that he might be catnapped by a treacherous furrier who took a fancy to his elegant suit. Once, when the laundry man came and dawdled (he was making eyes at Madella who was far more beautiful than any movie star or royal queen) the brave and self-sufficient hero of this story managed to get out into the public hall, which was full of mysterious and interesting shadows and smells. But Madella, helped by the laundry man (he was a dope) caught him just as he was about to explore the stairs going down.

  What a nice, sympathetic cat he was to fret so about a small white car that he didn’t even know! He gave up trying to sleep.

  He jumped from the table to a lower table where he found an open package of cigarettes. Neatly he removed the cigarettes and put claw-holes in all of them so that they couldn’t be smoked. He did this partly for fun and partly because in his opinion the Cuckoos smoked too much.

  Throughout the evening, Elephi kept returning to his post in the bay window to watch Whitey disappear.

  He performed his chores as usual, but his heart was not in his work. When Mrs. Cuckoo set the table for dinner, he pushed off the knives and unfolded t
he napkins and scooped the salt out of the salt dishes. And when Mr. Cuckoo came home and started to read the news, he charged the paper and sat down on the editorial page. Mr. Cuckoo said, “Listen, you, if it weren’t for herself and the dinner herself is making me, I’d have you up on a charge of disturbing the peace. If there’s one thing I hate more than another it’s a black cat sitting on my editorial page.” And old man Cuckoo handed him his thumb to box.

  Elephi emptied the ice bucket onto the rug and he put Mr. Cuckoo’s gloves in a safe place under a chair which had a skirt that went down to the floor. He renewed his acquaintance with the rubber birthday mouse who happened to be under the same chair.

  But Elephi was absent-minded and sad.

  Mrs. Cuckoo said, “The Well-Known Cat has something on his mind. I think he wants a chum.”

  And Mr. Cuckoo said, “This steak is a miracle. He doesn’t need a chum. He’s got you, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Cuckoo, “but sometimes I think he’d like a non-human being around the house.”

  Mr. Cuckoo said, “Give me some more steak.”

  So Mrs. Cuckoo knew that Elephi was lonesome. Maybe she would do something about it.

  The Well-Known Cat did not sleep well that night. He would wake up from a bad dream and look out the window. And the snow never stopped and the wind wailed and whistled and yelped and whinnied. It rattled the window-panes and it bent the Presbyterian trees. There were cars stalled everywhere. Some of them had been left in the middle of the street and at catty-cornered angles. It looked rather as if they had all started to play a game but had forgotten the rules so that everything had ended up in confusion.

  But the other cars were bigger than Whitey and none was so completely covered up. Cat imagined that they were bored and unhappy, but he did not really worry about them: Whitey was the original Orphan of the Storm.