Frog. It’s a pretty innocuous word, unlikely to strike fear in the hearts of man, at least not in the same way as “slasher”, “summons” or “enema”. I used to be unaffected myself, I remember in a school biology lesson we had a box of dead frogs to look at (no idea why) and I was able to handle mine without shrieking, fainting or running away and hiding. In fact, one of my favourite tales from childhood always used to be that of my mum standing barefoot on a dead frog the family cat had very kindly left in the middle of the patio. It stuck fast. How we laughed. And no, we didn’t help.

I was absolutely, genuinely, delighted about a year ago when for the first time I spotted that our garden pond was teeming with tadpoles. I hadn’t seen tadpoles since I was a child when we used to collect frogspawn in big ice cream tubs from the stream at the end of the road. We’d keep it in the garden, watch it develop and then ultimately forget about it, coming back several weeks later to a kind of dead tadpole soup. I had high hopes that wouldn’t happen in my pond and was looking forward to them getting legs and losing their tails and turning into frogs. Oh, what a fool I was! Firstly, the tadpoles never seemed to be developing. For weeks and weeks I kept looking and all that seemed to happen was that they got a bit bigger. This was very boring. Secondly, I hadn’t ever expected the froggy nightmare I was to be subjected to once our pesky kittens had their ops and were allowed outside. And once the tadpoles had all turned into frogs I rued the day I saw them and didn’t immediately aim a flamethrower at the pond, boiling them all into a kind of dead tadpole soup.

We have 2 cats, female tabbies, very pretty although one smells of bum and the other appears to have been dropped on her head at some point because she is mental and walks sideways. When they were small I thought the worst, most annoying thing they would do would be to scale the curtains or climb up the back of the sofa with their claws. The sofa really is totally ruined. Unfortunately, once they were allowed outside I hadn’t bargained for their kitty instincts or the stupidity of frogs. It wasn’t long before we had an unexpected visitor hopping about in the hall. And so my phobia was born. I don’t mind frogs in their own environment, I don’t wade around in ponds as a rule so they don’t bother me there. There’s just something horribly wrong about a clammy, hoppy frog on a carpetted floor, appearing out from behind the baby’s toys, making me jump and irrationally worry that it’s going to hop onto me. Or worse, onto the baby.

If the cats had only brought frogs into the house a handful of times perhaps my phobia might not have had the opportunity to take hold. But within a couple of days of the first incident I heard a strange noise while I was in the garden, sort of like a wailing cat, and I assumed that my cat was fighting another. When I went to look I realised that in fact Bumcat had cornered a frog and every time she batted it with her paw or tried to pick it up in her mouth it let out a piercing scream. That’s right, frogs scream. This was nearly enough to tip me over the edge and despite my attempts to scare the cat off by hitting her with a tea towel and shouting at her in a high pitched voice (I looked ridiculous) she wouldn’t let go. The phobia was now firmly rooted and irreversible.

I’d hoped that frog visits would be few and far between but they are not. Even winter, even SNOW was not enough to stop them from happening. The cats seem to wait until my husband has just left for work before they bring them in, or the frog remains in hiding until the door closes and they’ve heard his footsteps walking away before TADAAAAAA!!! Out they hop. There is always at least one frog a week, usually more, and some days several appear. A few of my friends think it is hilarious, but perhaps they should ask themselves the question of how they would feel if a plague of frogs was visited upon them? I’m hopping mad.