Somewhere not quite over the rainbow, not completely in this state or in that one, with one foot in a town on the Missouri River and one foot perhaps in Narnia or maybe in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, sits a Victorian mansion that is beginning to reawaken. For years it was abandoned — lost, in plain sight, as only enchanted things have the capability of being. And as with many enchanted things, it took a little blood and a few tears for the magic to be rediscovered.
The home is listed on the National Register as the Angell Mansion, but it has come to be known as the Krasnesky Manor for Wayward Cats. My wife and I purchased it in 2021, four days before Christmas. The three-month saga that began that September, and ended with us sitting at our sixteen-foot-long dining table, eating delivery pizza and drinking champagne, is a story in itself. Disclosures that occurred at the pre-closing walkthrough, when we came face to face with indignant raccoons in the attic and the seller mumbled, "Um, yeah, did I not mention the raccoons to you?" began to give us a glimpse into what was in store for us.
It took less than two weeks for The Manor to share its first secret with us. One of our first tasks was a cursory introduction of a dust rag to surfaces that had lain undusted for many years. The main floor of The Manor has fourteen-foot ceilings, which means that I was about ten feet above the ground when I climbed a ladder to dust the top of the shelves in the library and spotted a long stick, a watch, and a box lying there in the grime. Upon bringing them down, my wife, Robin, and I discovered that the "stick" was a Civil War presentation cane, the watch was a gold pocket watch from the 1920s, and the box was full of equestrian ribbons from the 1930s.
It's the kind of thing that you hope to find if you're the type of person who buys old mansions, but the rational side of you knows that things like that really don't happen that often. And The Manor was only just getting started. The cane, watch and ribbons were only the first flexing of its magical fingers as it woke and stretched from its long nap.
As you can imagine, our friends and family were very interested in our project and were constantly asking for updates. They thought we were quite mad for doing it, of course, but madness makes for good entertainment, so we created a social media page in order to post updates just once instead of having to send out a dozen different emails. A week into our daily updates, we noticed that we had over three hundred people on the page and that many of the names following us were completely unfamiliar to us.
Soon, people were not only following the page, but messaging us as well and sending us greetings from Seattle or New Zealand, or even Bulgaria! We began to interact with them and exchange messages. A woman traveled over an hour to visit The Manor for her eightieth birthday and have her picture taken on the stairs. A mother and daughter drove twelve hours from Texas, and even had t-shirts made saying "Krasnesky Manor for Wayward Cats Tour – 2023!"
It was not long before packages began to arrive as well. People sent us books, pictures, knick-knacks, and mementos that they felt belonged at The Manor. A worn but loved set of antique encyclopedias. Signed Dr. Who memorabilia. A book from the library of Luke May, better known as "America's Sherlock Holmes."
Every gift that was sent to us had two things in common. The first was that they were all things that were just a hair left of what someone might consider quirky or whimsical. The second was that they all had some absolutely unexplainable connection to us and held a meaning for us that the sender could never have known. It became clear that the dormant magic at The Manor was rapidly moving into the digital age.
And the discoveries in The Manor itself continued. We did a live video stream to show people the rolling ladders that we were installing in the library, and someone asked us about a painting above a doorway. We already had the ladders out and so we obliged the viewers and examined the painting. We discovered that it concealed a hidden reading nook that some child must have utilized a hundred years ago. In the nook were three antique books that the reader had likely intended to retrieve at some point, but circumstances had intervened, and the books had remained behind for us to find.
Squirrels in the carriage house dislodged several old cast iron piggy banks from the rafters, almost dropping them on my head in the process. My daughter saw something shiny in a photo from an upstairs utility room that we then immediately ran to check out and discovered a piece of gold from a brooch that we had overlooked when the photo had been taken. We even found an entire room in the basement that had been sealed off at some point in the past and was not shown on any of our house plans.
The most dramatic of the discoveries to date was probably the two jars full of silver coins that we found underneath the floorboards in one of the upper attics. That particular adventure was the result of some issues with the HVAC system, the antics of the omnipresent raccoons, and a rather peculiar dream from the night before.
This is not to in any way imply that our new life at The Manor has been full of treasure, carefree frolics with wildlife, and an abundance of new friends. Two months after moving in, our first contractor stole ten thousand dollars from us and disappeared. Our first Easter in the home, the old stove caught on fire and we wound up cooking on a hot plate for the next six months. A month later, on the first hot day of the summer, two of the three HVAC systems went out, creating sweaty, clothing-optional days when the temperatures breached the triple digits. Delays in the kitchen renovations left us without running water downstairs for several months, and we wound up washing our dishes on the back patio in a plastic tub.
It was kind of like being in college again, but with raccoons.
And also, as the name Krasnesky Manor for Wayward Cats implies, there were the cats. We brought our clowder along with us when we moved, all of them rescues and special needs animals. One of them, No Tail, a cat that I rescued from Afghanistan after my last deployment, became the unofficial spokes-cat for The Manor, although all of the permanent residents here have distinctive voices and personalities that they communicate in their frequent postings.
In addition to the permanent residents, other waywards continue to find us. The strays and the hungry find their way to our back door, as well as injured cats, but also the occasional injured deer or raccoon or even person. The lost and the discarded find their way here — because Wayward Cats come in many forms.
Several months ago, my eldest daughter, Rachael, called me in tears. She was on her way to the emergency room. She was pregnant and was suffering the same issues that had caused her to have a miscarriage the previous year. Her husband was on the way to the hospital to meet her, but she was still fifteen minutes away and so frightened that she was about to lose this baby as well.
She was four hours away from me and I could do nothing, but I was out in the garden when she called and so I stayed on the phone with her for the rest of her journey and talked to her about the flowers. I didn't tell her everything was going to be alright. I didn't tell her she needed to calm down. I just told her about which flowers liked more sun, which ones drew the most bees, and which ones had been nibbled on yet again by the deer and the groundhogs. By the time she reached the hospital, her panic had left her and her breathing had returned to normal.
I hadn't done anything for her physically, but for those fifteen minutes, it had been enough to let her set aside the more immediate concerns and listen to me talk about the flowers. It struck me that if it had helped her, it might help others as well. So, on our social media page, I wrote a post and made the offer that if anyone needed a break from whatever was troubling them or creating panic in their lives, they were invited to come out to the house, and if I was out in the garden, as I am most weekends, they could simply walk up to me and say, "Tell me about the flowers." I wouldn’t ask them any questions about why they were there or try to counsel them in any way. I would simply spend the next fifteen minutes with them, telling them about the flowers.
The magic of The Manor was probably most evident two months after that post when a young couple walked up our driveway. I was out in the garden and covered in dirt when they arrived. The woman stepped forward cautiously and held out her hand, and as I took her hand in mine and shook it, she simply said, "Tell me about the flowers." And for the next fifteen minutes, that's what I did. Afterward, I went inside to give them some time alone.
Robin was standing at the kitchen window, looking out at the garden when I came inside.
"They wanted to know about the flowers?" she asked.
"Yes," I replied.
And although I said in the post that I wouldn't ask questions, this case was a little different. The husband had messaged me privately because his wife's father had recently passed away, and when he asked what he could do to help, she had told him that she wanted to go to The Manor and have me tell her about the flowers. He was writing ahead to make sure that I would be home because we were in Kansas and they were traveling quite a distance.
"Do you know where they are from?" Robin asked.
"Seattle," I replied.
Robin's mouth fell open, and there were tears in her eyes. There were tears in my eyes as well, as I put my arm around her and we both turned to look out into the garden.
When things are lost, they find their way here, because Wayward Cats come in many different forms.
Thad and Robin Krasnesky’s daughter Rachael welcomed her first child, Eleanor, into the world in October. You can follow along Robin and Thad’s adventures and their rescue work on their Facebook page, Krasnesky Manor for Wayward Cats. Thad’s next book, “The Tale of No Tail,” a memoir about his rescue and relationship with a stray cat from Kabul, will be released in 2025.
The lost and the discarded find their way here — because Wayward Cats come in many forms.