The story begins with a brief background. Trevor's family had earlier owned two black cats, but they were killed by neighbours who suspected witchcraft, a reflection of the superstitions and racial tensions in their South African neighbourhood. After a period without pets, a colleague of Trevor's mother offered them two puppies. His mother brought them home and named them Fufi and Panther. While Panther was smart, alert, and responsive, Fufi seemed slow and unresponsive — the family simply assumed she was not very intelligent. Trevor adored Fufi completely. He raised her, trained her, shared his bed with her, and considered her the love of his life. Only years later, when Fufi was fatally injured and taken to the vet, did the family discover the truth — Fufi had been deaf all along. What they had mistaken for stupidity was simply an inability to hear.
The heart of the story, however, is a discovery Trevor makes during the school holidays. Left alone at home one morning, he watches in disbelief as Fufi scales the five-foot backyard wall and disappears into the neighbourhood. He follows her on his bicycle and trails her across several streets to another house, where she jumps into a stranger's yard. When Trevor rings the bell, a boy answers — and to Trevor's shock, the boy calls Fufi by another name entirely: "Spotty." A heated argument follows, each boy insisting the dog belongs to him. Since Fufi is deaf, she responds to neither name and simply stands between them, indifferent to the drama she has caused. The boy's mother eventually gets involved, refuses to return the dog, and only releases her after Trevor's mother returns with photographs, veterinary certificates, and finally a payment of a hundred rand.
Trevor is devastated — not just by the difficulty of getting Fufi back, but by the emotional wound of seeing her with another boy, behaving as though she did not know him. He sobs the whole way home. His mother, characteristically no-nonsense, has little patience for his grief: "So? Why would that hurt you? It didn't cost you anything. Fufi's here. She still loves you." But Trevor cannot easily recover from what he feels as a betrayal.
The anecdote closes with the adult Trevor reflecting on what that experience taught him. He realises, looking back, that Fufi was not being disloyal. She had no malicious intent. She was simply living her life fully — and that life included another family, another yard, another boy. The lesson he draws from this is one he carries into adulthood: "You do not own the thing you love." He counts himself fortunate to have learned this at such a young age, and whenever friends come to him heartbroken over relationships, he sits with them and says, "Friend, let me tell you the story of Fufi."
In its tone, the anecdote is funny and tender in equal measure — a childhood memory told with the wit of a comedian and the wisdom of someone who was able to understand what it meant.
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