About The Author

Aaron has a cat that claws at printed words. He’s a Kijiji cat named Pepper Peckinpah, and not much is known about his previous home life, except that he hailed from a small apartment inside a senior’s building. I suppose there’s a chance of him being fluent in Chinese, because his owner was an international student from Beijing, which came as a surprise to Aaron, in the context of the senior’s building, on the day of the adoption. Naturally, this young medical student from Beijing was responsible for giving Pepper his name, with Peckinpah being added later on, after Aaron became acquainted with his new feline friend. Apart from clawing at printed words, he enjoys rough-housing his brother Steve, who’s also adopted. The two of them get along just fine, but Pepper is older, and perhaps that’s why he regularly asserts his dominance in a violent and sometimes quasi-sexual manner. For all his growling and carrying on, he has a softer side. It’s not unusual to see him cleaning Steve like a mother cleans her kittens, however, these shows of affection have a way of turning into something that resembles a slow motion boxing match. I suppose he’s not that much different from his eponymous namesake, the film director, Sam Peckinpah, who was a difficult and complicated man prone to extreme mood swings and violent outbursts of temper that were starkly contrasted with his sweeter, more softly-spoken, artistic side. Currently, Aaron’s favourite Peckinpah film is Straw Dogs. Sometimes he wonders if Pepper would approve of this choice. Other times, he contemplates Pepper’s unusual habit of laying down on the keyboard whenever an Alan Watts lecture gets played.