Catt Foy, Writer, Artist, Spiritual Advisor

Dancing Sycamores of Ojai

4/13/2025

(c) Catt Foy 2014

The dancing sycamores of Ojai
Taught me I could talk to the trees
All the trees
I could talk to the Grandmother Oak
That lived in the front yard of my former home
There, touching her through the sycamore bark
In the cricketed dark of Ojai
Along a stream beneath the moonlight
I told her I loved her and missed her
And I could feel her hear me.
Because of the wisdom of the dancing
Sycamores of Ojai.

I later learned that it was the mycelium network of fungi that enabled the tree-to-tree communication, validating my experience.

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Octopus Love

4/11/2025

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Octopus Love
A short story by Catt Foy, (c) 2021

Ima stretched and felt her own energy flow into her extremities. Her arms undulated in the early morning current and she wiggled the tips. Her mate, disturbed by her movement, wriggled closer and enclosed her in his arms. The places where he touched her glowed with a faint aquamarine light and she sighed at the tingly sensations. Tiny rippling muscles flexed and Ima’s skin shifted through a palette of colors and textures before settling down again to its normal smooth mottled state. Puva made her feel safe.

Her smaller mate snorted in his sleep and drew her closer. She contracted to better fit in his somnambulant grasp. But hunger soon trumped sleep. Ima pulled away from Puva. She pushed back the three rocks guarding the entrance to the den and drifted quietly away in search of food. The weather was changing; a cold current rolled in from the north and the sand was shifting wildly in its face. For Ima, this was good—most predators would stay above where the visibility was better.

But for Ima, this sea change meant little inconvenience. She could feel and smell and taste her way along in any conditions. Now, she stretched along the sea floor seeking breakfast and was quickly rewarded with the discovery of a cache of crabs. Grabbing one with her beak, she cracked it open and licked the tasty contents, discarding the broken shell. A bevy of escapees attempted to hide beneath a small rock ledge, but Ima simply flattened out, covering the entire little space with her body and herding the refugees into her mouth one by one with her arms stretched and flattened like a net. Thus sated, she set about to search for a new den.

Ima rolled over and looked up at the distant surface, reviewing her earliest memories. The farthest she could remember was when she was tiny, just a speck on the surface, but voraciously hungry. Her sensory memory included the sweet green flavor of plankton, and she marveled at the sheer abundance of them. They were many colors, many shapes, some looked like stars, others were oval or shaped like balls, or flat and worm-like. She imagined that in eating them, she absorbed their many forms and this is why she could now change her own shape and color, because she still carried the energy of the millions of planktons she had consumed. They lived still, in the cells of her own body.

A new home was required now that she carried ripening eggs inside her body. Soon they would be ready to fertilize. When that was done, she would need a place to string them, where she could protect them as they grew over the coming weeks. The current den was not large enough—she needed to be able to push water over them as they matured.

They had been together for only a few days, having mated. Puva was a strong explorer and she had observed him for a long time before allowing him to approach her. Her observation had begun as a search for food and the smaller octopus looked like a solid meal. But his antics caught her attention, intrigued her and sparked a previously unknown desire in her gelatinous body. She suddenly yearned for procreation.

She had been cleaning her den, scooping all the shells from her meals into a neat pile, rearranging the rocks that protected the entrance. She deemed one rock inferior and cast it onto the discards, then scoured the seabed nearby for a superior one. She knew it when she found it—a nice white-veined rock with a reassuringly rough texture that also tasted good, like baby shrimp. Perfect. Just as she placed the rock in its new home, she saw him, skulking behind some nearby corals. At first he looked like lunch, but as she watched, he began to swirl his arms, displaying enormous suckers.

She stood up straight, extended her spikes in a protective stance, three arms held with suckers up to better taste his presence in the water. She raised her eyes to get a better look. His scent was attractive, and his swirling colorful dance was mesmerizing. Slowly she lowered her arms, relaxed her spikes, and watched as Puva drew closer.

He was the only other octopus she had seen in days, and with this newfound desire driving her, she allowed him to approach. Closer, closer he came, then extended one arm to her. She thrilled at the unaccustomed touch, and yielded to his invasion of her gill slit. The satisfaction, the sense of completeness that overwhelmed her held her there, still and accepting for a brief eternity. Then, pulling away, Puva’s arm detached from his body and remained inside her.

Now that the mating was complete, Puva would soon swim away to die, leaving his tentacle embedded deep within her, waiting for her eggs to escape. Then she would remove the arm, tear open the sperm packets attached to it and sprinkle their contents on her egg clusters.

While she searched the reef, she came across a small round bottle. Shushing water at it, she rolled it playfully along the sea floor until it clinked into a rocky outcropping. Rippling colors crossed her skin as she expressed her delight in the game.

Puva approached her now and together they raced around the reef, drawing into their mantles vast quantities of water and shooting it back out, propelling themselves like underwater balloons deflating rapidly. As they played, they also moved upward, rolling and dancing in the cold turbulence from the north.

Then a dark shadow loomed. A shark searching for its own breakfast. He spied the two octopuses and descended toward them with a deadly precision.

Puva and Ima separated. Ima burped ink and a gush of water in the direction of the predator, obscuring both his optic and olfactory senses while she scuttled off. She quickly dropped to the seabed, stretched and flattened, colors shifting, stretching skin and puffing papillae until she was indistinguishable from the surrounding rocks.

The shadow of the shark crossed over her and disappeared into the deep. Puva was nowhere to be seen.

She resumed her search for a new den.

Then ahead and just above her she saw Puva. The shark had gone, but a man-o-war had replaced the grinning predator and was now heading toward Puva. Ima approached the two, and the man-o-war turned to confront her—or devour her. Puva moved swiftly and grabbing one of the tentacles of the jellyfish, ripped it from the man-o-war’s body and began wielding it. The man-o-war, wounded, retreated into the darkness of the sea. The shark approached again, but seeing the tentacle being waved about by the scrappy octopus, thought better of his assault and swam off in search of less disagreeable food.

Ima returned to her den search and Puva dropped the tentacle. Not long after, he too, rolled over and drifted slowly to the seabed. Ima barely noticed the demise of her lover. By then Ima was cleaning and organizing a new den—one where she would soon deposit the next generation of octopuses.

Octopuses represent a wide range of species. In this fictional account I have borrowed the habits of several different species to create more compelling characters.

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Xavier's Other Woman

4/10/2025

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Xavier’s Other Woman
(c) 2010 Catt Foy

After refilling her coffee travel mug, Madeline left for the office.

Xavier kissed his beautiful successful wife—an interior designer with her own shop in the local well-heeled east village. He watched through the sidelight flanking the broad Spanish doors as she walked to the car.

Her hips swung subtly up down left right with each step, accentuating her well-shaped derriere, set off this morning by a black pencil skirt. Not quite callipygian—hers was not an ample bottom—but sufficient to spark his love and admiration anew.

In the same mental breath, he thought of his other woman, whose bottom also swung seductively in her tight skirts, her long legs shapely beneath her hose. She often wore patterns in her stockings that created the illusion of graceful animal legs, or suggested the poses of a dancer. Her waist was thicker than Madeline’s, but her ample bustline more than made up for it.

He walked away from the front door, thinking now less about Madeline than about the other woman. A secretive seductive thrill gripped him as he contemplated her presence in his life.

He loved her clothes, often lacy, sometimes demure, always feminine. She wore things like feather boas and sequined bodices, slit skirts or svelte dresses, the feel of which was enough to drive a man insane with pleasure. As he crossed the lushly appointed living room with its art deco sculptures and oversize paintings, he looked through the opposite glass wall revealing trees and well-groomed paths, roses in sunny places, ferns and hostas in the shady ones, all terraced down five levels to the creek below.

He passed the credenza sitting beneath one of the paintings and glanced at a photo of Madeline. She was squinting against the sunlight, standing on the deck of their boat, in short white cotton pants and a tank top. She wore a white Gilligan hat that made her seem whimsical and girlish, a water nymph teasing him. The other woman, he thought with a sigh, rarely went out-of-doors, though he longed to bring her someplace wild and windy. Madeline had his heart, without a doubt, but there was a special place for his other woman as well. Perhaps someday, he could allow the other to show herself in more public places.

He pictured her long blond hair, saw her brushing it in his mind’s eye, letting it cascade over one shoulder, hiding the place where her breasts would be—so coquettish. He imagined her delicately painted toes, her long nails, her richly glossed lips, the smoky eye makeup that he found so alluring.

Now he could see her before him, primping in the mirror. She had sifted through several pairs of panties, choosing the lacy black ones and tossing the others carelessly on the bed. Now she was trying on this dress or that skirt until she settled on tight black pair of capris to show off her behind. He especially like the way they focused the eye on the line of demarcation between the buttocks and the legs, that curve where the two met. He loved to feel that curve, the meeting place of her visual virtues. A light black heel lifted the buttocks ever so slightly, enhanced the arc of the calf, the hollow of the knee, the turn of the ankle. He thought how the structure reminded him of the beautiful structure of a racing horse with its promise of swiftly delivered thrills.

A long white men’s shirt, open to reveal her décolletage provided a contrast which only sharpened her femininity. A black velvet choker complemented the dangle earrings and the gypsy bracelets and the silver and onyx Indian rings in various shapes on several fingers. Today her hair was long, but black, like Cher’s, and she arranged it casually, gathered loosely at the neck. Unlike Cher, she wore bangs and two long strands that curled in a simple swoop close to her cheeks. He watched excitedly as she put on her lipstick, pouting lips outward as if to kiss the mirror. When at last she stepped back, he saw perfection and delighted in his view.

“I forgot my briefcase!” shouted Madeline, as she tapped down the hallway.

He turned suddenly, frightened, uncertain what to do. It was too late to hide the other woman.

“Oh my God!” Madeline exclaimed as she entered the room. “Xavier?”

The man standing in high heels and black capris with the white shirt, his makeup and hair done to perfection, could only stare in disbelief.

“What on earth are you wearing?” A long heartbeat passed between them. Madeline looked at the clothing on the bed. “Are those my panties?”

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Dancing Sycamores of Ojai

Octopus Love

Xavier's Other Woman

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