Veteran‘s Day TNR

Ashley and Eddie Ashley

Eddie Splawn had been on our waiting list for a very long time and it was pure coincidence that our trapping day fell on November 11 – Veteran’s Day – for this disabled Vietnam War veteran. Eddie worked for many years after the war, but his heart and lungs gradually succumbed to the effects of Agent Orange and so he remains at home, often on oxygen, while his wife continues to work. The Splawns live over the hill from the Rutherford County Animal Control facility and Eddie believes the cats who have arrived at his home through the years are “escapees” from the pound.

We were taking Ashley Boone with us for the trapping. Ashley is a student in the REACH program, and she was doing a project on animal cruelty and rescue and wanted to have some experience with TNR. She could not come until class was out for the day. Since Eddie had approximately a dozen cats for us to trap, we felt it was necessary to set traps before we picked up Ashley at ICC so that we would get a head start and be ready with a car load of cats before closing time at the veterinarian’s clinic. However, before we could get the third and fourth traps set we had already caught cats in traps one and two. Eddie helped us with the transferring from trap to carrier while the third trap also engaged. We reset traps and headed out to pick up Ashley with three cats already in the car! With Ashley’s assistance we continued trapping until time to leave for the vet’s with nine cats in the car. Ashley helped us think of names for the cats and fill out paper work. We had all the carriers tagged by 5:00 – closing time. After we took Ashley home, we called Eddie and learned that he had two more cats trapped. We returned to transfer those to carriers, and by the next morning Eddie had the last two in traps. He gave his wife a ride to work so he could have the car to drive the remaining cats to the vet’s. With Ashley Boone’s help we had trapped thirteen cats for a Vietnam Vet on Veteran’s Day. It was a nice way to be able to say thank you to Eddie and all our other military veterans.