‘Doing this properly or not, are we?’

My translation is too rough for you. You can’t do this thing and I cannot help you.

The small green frog has nestled himself within the zucchini bushes and frets about what he will do next to escape the cat.

The cat is merely a small white and black moggie who considers himself a saviour to humans. He is rather proud of himself – which is very catlike and normal for cats.

‘Do I need saving from a frog,’ thinks the human. ‘There really are not enough of them around for me to be saved from them. Perhaps you should reconsider the circumstances of el cato.’

The circumstances of el cato were deliberately falsified by other human beings. We do not return to that horrible place. He thinks this often and it has been agreed the cat’s “mother” had been right all along. He sees a large and heavy ball by a wall, coloured to resemble waves on water or electricity (which are really quite similar). It was a pond the princess had been playing beside in the original story by the brothers Grimm or was that Hans Christian Anderson? This is the purpose of the frog and the “maid” – to share these stories with new thinking and similarities that show how the blending is done.

The frog can hear this from under the large leaves of the zucchini plant. ‘What about me,’ he burps quietly to himself. ‘Do I need saving, or can I just dig myself a hole?’

There are many questions floating around in the small garden of the family. The frog suggests the people mama do not go out to the back fence because a kangaroo child is also listening in.

They have all watched the child of the small brown kangaroo follow his mother back and forth along the hot street. Some have seen how she gets stuck when a route she used one morning is blocked the following morning and she must feed her child by a fence with no openings she can discern. Some think they should be fed, although this is not the way of the kangaroo. All she needs to find her offspring (and here the frog would grin as his mouth is wide and the perfect shape to perform such an act) is some narrow-leaved plants with lovely sweet pieces that sit just under the soil.

‘That is all I need as well,’ thinks the frog. ‘Just some plants that are damp enough I can find some insects to eat. I am very good at hunting insects.’

‘How is the translation going,’ questions the female bird. ‘Am I getting this right again?’

‘Understanding and doing is not the… damn it,’ says the frog around an insect whose legs are long and crunchy. ‘Then count me as I jump, for I would rather be a bearer of good news.’

Pleading with me will not work, for I did not put him here.

Can we see him yet, though? Is he rounded and full with new information? Can he see the light of day? Must he always be such a pain in the arse, or will the mother realise he is dreaming again?

Does she even know my Hame, thinks the kangaroo child, for he has learnt at least one language other than his own in recent years.

The mother looks up from her position at the table. ‘They are spying,’ she thinks to herself, and she is right, for they have been trying to write with her this whole time.

They do not wish to be horrible, thinks the frog, but they do not know why she thinks they are friendly.

‘I do not believe she ever thought they were friendly,’ the cat yells from the back door. ‘Oh whoops, I didn’t realise it was open,’ he thinks as the person stares down at him with vague irritation. Ducking his head to apologise for his own small thinking, he clicks and clacks his way down a dark corridor to where he knows a large and comfortable sleeping place awaits. ‘This is the only place that is friendly, and this is where I am staying. These are my people, and I am a cat.’

He thinks loudly out the window and a kangaroo child is frightened by his noisiness. 

‘Bugger off, I said.’

The little beast is dumbfounded. How did such a big thought come out of such a small cat? The cat smiles to himself. He has been training with humans, and learnt how to borrow their voices to make his own thinking louder. He leaps onto the mattress and gazes at the man who talks in his sleep.

‘This one continues to surprise me with these thoughts,’ says the wannabe demon of his large human counterpart. ‘Where is that frog again?’ He jumps off the bed.

The frog sneaks off with a plip and a plop to find himself a hole in the sand. He just wants to live another day and get some new ideas.

‘This one is too much for frogs,’ he thinks. ‘She doesn’t like me at all.’

He would be dumbfounded to know he was right.

A “recalibration” (retelling) of The Frog Prince, with dashes of Rapunzel. Spoken with Grimm determination in an Australian accent.

C.S Capewell.