Today we take a moment for our annual reflection on all that we are grateful for, here at Civil War Tails.

This Thanksgiving, we looked through our “comment diary” and pulled out some of our favorite memories from the last year.

Some adjectives we have heard (repeatedly) this year are:

• Awesome
• Amazing
• Phenomenal
• Spectacular
• Marvelous
• Remarkable

Some of our favorite reactions and comments:

• “I’m flabbergasted!”
• “This is so much better than I expected!”
• “My life is so much better now, knowing this is here!”
• “My mind is blown!”
• “This was delightful.”

It warms our hearts to see how our dioramas catch kids’ imaginations or help to interest them in the real stories. This year, two particular interactions come to mind.

The first was a little boy, not much older than a toddler, who I happened to notice as he looked at “Desperation at Skull Camp Bridge.” He was short enough that the swimming horse’s nose was right at his own nose level. He stood for the longest time, unmoving, mouth agape, nose to nose with the horse, just looking at him, and then just looking at Gen. Wheeler’s horse, also at eye-level. It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen—a little kid, too young to understand history and facts, completely fascinated by a couple of little Sculpey horses, on his eye-level, looking back at him.

The second is a family who visited last year and bought our book. In reading it, the story of Lt. Frank Haskell’s horse, Dick, caught one child’s fascination. When they returned for a second visit, the child asked about “the horse that was wounded in the leg, and he died, but he was helping…” I immediately knew that she meant Dick, and pointed him out to her on our Pickett’s Charge diorama. On their third visit, the child still remembered Dick and looked for him again. Lt. Haskell wrote about Dick in a letter home after the battle of Gettysburg, describing how brave the horse was and how he had stayed on his feet, carrying Haskell to and fro, despite being severely wounded. Haskell finished by saying that his horse deserved a monument. There is no monument to Dick on the battlefield, but we have a little model that is telling his story to future generations!

We enjoy seeing our dioramas surprise skeptical visitors. Yes, that’s right, not everyone arrives thinking they will like Civil War cats. So it is fun to hear comments like, “I thought we would be here for five minutes, and now I’m like, ‘We gotta leave??’” Over and over, the historical accuracy of our dioramas wins over the hearts of the history buffs who came in just to be supportive of a friend or family member. We very much appreciate their willingness to tag along, and then their excitement and “geeking out” over details like the ironclads or the corps badges on Little Round Top’s Yankees.

One particularly memorable comment caught us by surprise! “This [visit to Civil War Tails] is life-changing!” Wait, life-changing? The visitor went on to explain that seeing our dioramas was the first time she could picture the battle, despite growing up locally and visiting the battlefield since. This reaction is one that never gets old. We love hearing how our dioramas help people—novices and buffs alike—to visualize what they have heard or read about. Time and again, we hear, “This helped me understand…” or “Nothing has brought the scope of it to me like this!”

Next year, we will celebrate 10 years of our museum (and 30 years of making Civil War cats!). We give thanks to God for placing the right people in our lives to show us that cat dioramas might just be “a thing,” and especially Helen who encouraged us every year to take our dioramas into schools (a suggestion that ultimately led us to start the museum). We also thank God for putting the pieces into place for us to find and buy our building and to turn it into Civil War Tails.

We thank Mom and Dad for helping us on this venture, one that we dreamed about as kids but never thought possible. It truly would not be possible without them. I know we say it every year, but it’s worth repeating!

And we thank you—all the visitors who come into the museum, all the folks on social media who are too far away to visit but share our posts and tell their friends, and all of you who support our museum by ordering merchandise through our website when you can’t make it here in person. Thank you for allowing our clay cats to bring you joy, whether in person, in online pictures, or even by discovering a Civil War Tails brochure on a rough day! We continue to be surprised by how our dioramas are touching people’s lives. We love doing it and seeing it, and we hope to continue for many years to come.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!