Born a Crime: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Cats, Noah notes in his preface, are uncommon everywhere he has ever been in Africa. (In South Africa, “only witches have cats, and all cats are witches.”) During a recent soccer match, a security guard beat a cat to death on live television like “any sensible black person” (because it was a witch). It created a media outcry among white animal lovers, and the man “had to pay some enormous fine.” Of course, Noah notes, “white people had spent years seeing video of black people being beaten to death by other white people,” and yet now they are furious at the violence. Anyway, “in South Africa, black people have dogs.”

Patricia brings home two black cats a month after she and Trevor move to Eden Park. They are both excited and do not worry about “any nonsense about cats.” In their new colored neighborhood, they figure people will not care. One night, they return home to find the cats beheaded, tied to the family’s front gate, with a sign in Afrikaans: “Witch.” Trevor doesn’t much care—the cats were not particularly nice, anyway.

After some time, they get dogs instead, like “almost every black family” in South Africa, who keep dogs not as “members of the family” but more as “a poor-man’s alarm system.” Patricia and Trevor’s dogs are two sisters, Maltese-bull terrier mixes, named Fufi and Panther. They have a love-hate relationship: they get along but also have bloody fights. Panther is Patricia’s, and Fufi is Trevor’s; Panther is ugly, and Fufi is beautiful; Panther is smart, and Fufi is “dumb as shit.” Fufi never responds to any commands—after a burglar kills her some years later, the vet informs Trevor and Patricia that Fufi was deaf the whole time.

Fufi and Trevor are inseparable; she does tricks and even manages to jump the yard’s five-foot wall, which she does every morning after Trevor and Patricia leave the house. Home during school vacation one day, Trevor realizes this and follows Fufi across town on his bicycle. She jumps into another yard, where another kid insists she is his dog, “Spotty.” The family locks Fufi in their house that night, so she cannot return, and when Patricia and Trevor show up with Fufi’s veterinary documents and puppyhood photos, they manage to buy her back. Regardless, Trevor cries all the way home, heartbroken that “Fufi loves another boy.” He learns a “valuable lesson”: that “you do not own the thing that you love.”