Pet Sounds #90: Fires in the Distance’s Cat Narrowly Escaped Strict Landlord – and Lived to Pee About It
“She was just my perfect companion for 14.5 years. Every day I was happy to see her, and I’m honored to say she was happy to see me too.”
-Fires in the Distance vocalist/guitarist Brendan Hayter
There’s a strong case to be made that melodic death-metal bands gain notice and recognition, and cultivate their fanbases, by devoting far more time and energy to their recorded output as opposed to touring. Fires in the Distance are an exception to that generalization – because their exceptional live performances are as exceptional as their studio material. Amorphis and Dark Tranquillity helped the Connecticut band gain notice with an opening slot on the European heroes’ joint tour three years ago, on the strength of just two Fires in the Distance full-lengths: 2020’s Echoes From Deep November and 2023’s Air Not Meant for Us.
Like clockwork (as another Scandinavian extreme-metal band, Meshuggah, would say), Fires in the Distance just issued their third record, Circadian Promise, after another three years of dutiful songwriting and recording – and issued it via Prosthetic, which put out the quartet’s first two gems. (That’s notwithstanding an instrumental album released in ) On paper, what’s most striking about the new record is that it features a new frontman: vocalist/guitarist/lyricist Brendan Hayter, whose surname is as well-suited for a metal band as his chops are for the doomish MDM crew.
In an effort to further acquaint Fires in the Distance fans with Hayter, The Bad Penny recently connected with him to participate in our ongoing Pet Sounds series, to which he graciously obliged. He told us all about his cat Mimsy, and while we typically don’t include discussions about pets post mortem, Hayter’s touching recollections about his companion and how he worked through her loss are valuable advice to pet owners about how to deal with both love and grief over animals.
How did you and Mimsy cross paths in the first place?
A friend of my sister Amanda had a cat who gave birth to a batch of kittens in early 2011. My sister is actually the one who adopted Mimsy, but she soon chose me as her one rightful human.
What are your earliest memories of her, aside from the ones you might’ve just described in the first question?
She was absolutely tiny – technically the runt of the litter. She was semi-feral, and that really showed when she first came home. She was quite hissy and pissy in the beginning! Refused to be held, wasn’t really affectionate – until she started perching herself on my knee whenever I sat down. Especially when I played guitar, for some reason, she’d perch on my knee right in front of the guitar and mute the strings with her tail. She continued this behavior her whole life.
What distinguished Mimsy from other cats?
A very beautiful, normal-looking tabby, just … smaller. When hyper, she scaled door frames faster than any cat I’ve ever seen. She made direct eye contact a lot, giving a genuine stare into the soul. A loving stare, though.
What were her most endearing qualities?
Her fur patterns, her paws, her meows, her purrs … everything about her was precious, I can’t single anything out!
What were her most annoying qualities?
If she wanted to leave my room when the door was closed, she’d start knocking CDs over. She’d go to the door, look at it, then grab a CD from the shelf and pull it to the floor. She broke a few cases! Even this was amusing, though.
What’s the worst trouble she ever got in, and how did you react to/deal with it?
She [rarely] got in trouble, but [she almost did us in] when we lived for a year in a shared house that was supposed to have no cats. The landlord lived completely remote, but there was a last-minute drop-in near the end of our tenancy. My wife literally snuck her out the back door as the landlord entered the front door. They got in my car to drive off, and she hated the car. No carrier or anything, my wife placed her on the front seat, and she instantly raised her tail and projectile-pissed all over everything in a panic! The smell never really left that car, even after cleaning.
What’s your favorite memory of Mimsy?
I don’t have a specific one. She was just my perfect companion for 14.5 years. Every day I was happy to see her, and I’m honored to say she was happy to see me too.
How did Mimsy inform your art/artistic process?
I was just revisiting some riffs from the first Obsidian Tongue album [from 2012], which feels like a lifetime ago, and I realized even [when] that album [was] getting finalized and recorded, she was around. She hung around every unplugged bedroom session, and back then I was writing a lot for my solo project Truthseeker, now known as Anamnesian. This project was meant to be the “happy” side of me to compliment the very unhappy feelings I was processing through Obsidian Tongue. I think her company really informed that process, since she was in the room for almost al of those compositions!
Do any of your songs reference Mimsy and/or did she influence any of them during their creation?
I never directly incorporate things from my personal life into my songs. Feelings and emotional processes in general, but no specifics. So I’ve never put a pet name in a song. But again, she was my little mascot for a lot of my writing.
Did Mimsy pass away unexpectedly?
She was struggling with a condition for the last three or so months of her life. We were doing everything we could while we tried to figure out what the hell was going on. Cats are too good at hiding things. If she let on a little earlier, maybe we could have saved her from the point of no return. She took a turn for the worse right after we scheduled a very expensive surgery to try to save her.
What was the process of grief like for you when she passed?
Hard to explain. I’m no stranger to grief and processing loss, but this one stung differently, since prior to her illness, I was nothing but proud about how well she was aging, how she looked the same as she did when she was 3, acted the same, everything. Lots of cats live to be around 20, and that’s what we were expecting to have with her. We weren’t oblivious to her age, but we had no reason to think we weren’t going to get a few more happy years with her. The month before her symptoms started, we said goodbye to the family cat, Seamus, who had just turned 20. The back-to-back loss of my two favorite pets I’ll ever have was undeniably draining. I’m still recovering my emotional capacity, it feels like.
How did you cope with her loss?
What I’ve learned is how to focus on feeling proud of the time and love shared with any person or pet. Not giving into anything other than a heart-swelling pride and honor for having been good to another creature, and knowing they loved you too. I tended to her every need for her entire life, and I’m honored to have done so. Time is an illusion anyway, so internally, the life we spent together can continue forever. I reminisce daily but have worked hard to make the reminiscence warm and proud. It’s an ongoing process.
How do you recommend others cope with their loss of a pet?
All I can offer is in the answer above. There is more truth to the cliché sayings surrounding a loss than one may think. Everyone will have their own lengthy and intricate process inside to then come back around to such elementary truths and be able to embrace them not obliviously, but with wisened consciousness.
When did you finally reach the point of acceptance that she was gone?
I’m not sure. I suppose when I picked up her ashes and hung up a shelf to put them on.
What is Mimsy’s legacy?
Keeping my wife and I excited to be home every day. It was hard to keep a social life when you had her at home, jumping in the window and wailing whenever we walked out the door! Life fucking sucks, work sucks, finances suck. I escaped the dread of these things every day through her, and she helped make work worthwhile since it gave me the money to go buy her food and come home and give it to her. Her legacy was providing 14 years of perseverance for me.
The Pet Sounds archive is here. Go here for Fires in the Distance shopping. They’re also on Bandcamp and Facebook.
The Bad Penny (beta) 
Leave a comment