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[Egan_BW]

I personally would never trade the ability to leave my house for a few extra years of life. Why would you assume that's good for animals in any way?

[misko27]

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EDIT: looks like Google is pretty much wrong then about Dutch wildlife.
let's see... Foxes? Extremely rare. Won't find in cities like you can in the UK. Not a threat to city cats.
Wolves? Nope. Once every few years a German or Polish tourists pulls off a stunt, and drops a dead wolf on Dutch roads. Then the nature freaks all go hype 'THE WOLF HAS RETURNED TO THE NETHERLANDS AFTER BEING EXTINCT FOR 2 CENTURIES', only to come to the conclusion after genetic testing that it's a hoax wolf from Poland.
Bears? Lol, just no. There's no bears in the Netherlands. Don't think there have been for at least 1000 years.
Badgers? If you see one, call the newspaper. They're either extinct or maybe there's one breeding pair still hiding somewhere under a rock in the National Park de Hooge Veluwe.
Beavers? Okay, we have some that were released back into the wild about 20 years ago, and that turned out to be a really succesful project. Water management is even starting to ask permission to cull their populations, because their dams threaten our water management. They're nowhere near where I live though.
Hawks? We have some small birds of prey, they're pretty darn rare, and even the largest one is nowhere near large enough to tackle a cat.

For fucks sake man do you even have wildlife.

I mean I live in NYC so I'm not going to condemn your localized mass extinction event but come on now. Are you telling me there is nothing where you live big enough to threaten a common housecat?

I personally would never trade the ability to leave my house for a few extra years of life. Why would you assume that's good for animals in any way?

By contrast, I would totally take that deal, provided it came with a job allowing for a life like that (obviously one of the benefits of living indoors is people feed you, so that seems like a fair deal).

For what it's  worth, my cat is something like... 16 now? 17 maybe. He's lived indoors all his life and seems perfectly healthy, minus an as-yet unidentified thing on his lip (vet told us it is likely a wart). Still seems to have as much energy as when we first got him 12 years ago or so.

[redwallzyl]

Wouldn't the native wildlife for a lot of the Netherlands technically be fish?

[scourge728]

I personally would never trade the ability to leave my house for a few extra years of life. Why would you assume that's good for animals in any way?

Don't think of it as trading the ability to leave your house for a few extra years of life, think of it as trading the ability to leave a (usually) much safer environment for a significant extra chunk of lifespan since housecats have an average lifespan of about 15 years, not to mention that even in places with no wildlife, there are still things such as traffic, other cats, diseases from other cats and animal control euthanization

[martinuzz]

For fucks sake man do you even have wildlife.

I mean I live in NYC so I'm not going to condemn your localized mass extinction event but come on now. Are you telling me there is nothing where you live big enough to threaten a common housecat?

Nope. We don't have wild nature, we don't have wildlife. We have some aurochsen in a National Park and some Przwalsky horses roaming parkified polders, but there's no large predators here.
Housecats are the top predator we have.
The Netherlands is a bit like New Zealand, as in, you won't find anything poisonous or otherwise lethal. We have a grand total of 3 native snakes, one is poisonless, the other is an earthworm (also poisonless I believe), the last is a viper with poison so weak it can't even kill a child. All three are also basically extinct, you'll have to camp on the heather for a few years to spot one. Most dangerous animal in our country is the tick, for carrying Lyme's disease.

[martinuzz]

Don't think of it as trading the ability to leave your house for a few extra years of life, think of it as trading the ability to leave a (usually) much safer environment for a significant extra chunk of lifespan since housecats have an average lifespan of about 15 years, not to mention that even in places with no wildlife, there are still things such as traffic, other cats, diseases from other cats and animal control euthanization

Traffic, check. Problem. Which is why I chose to live in a house in a neighborhood with speed humps (traffic island? dunno the english word) everywhere and 30km/h max speed.
Diseases from other cats? Nah, cats are vaccinated once every few years.
Animal control euthanization? Nope. They've got microhips under their skin.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That sounds goddamn dystopian. I got my fill of over-settlement in a week of LA, but to have that sort of thing spread out over an entire nation...I'm surprised your greens aren't ecoterrorists after living in that kind of environment.

[martinuzz]

We have lots of parks, city trees, and rural areas. There's just no original nature left. Our largest piece of 'nature' is National Park de Hooge Veluwe, which isn't really nature, it was hand planted as a hunting ground for the royal family a few centuries ago.

The only exception is our coastal area. Our wads are international protected wildlife preserves. They're very important for migrating birds, and a cradle for baby fish.

[scriver]

For fucks sake man do you even have wildlife.

I mean I live in NYC so I'm not going to condemn your localized mass extinction event but come on now. Are you telling me there is nothing where you live big enough to threaten a common housecat?

Nope. We don't have wild nature, we don't have wildlife. We have some aurochsen in a National Park and some Przwalsky horses roaming parkified polders, but there's no large predators here.
Housecats are the top predator we have.
The Netherlands is a bit like New Zealand, as in, you won't find anything poisonous or otherwise lethal. We have a grand total of 3 native snakes, one is poisonless, the other is an earthworm (also poisonless I believe), the last is a viper with poison so weak it can't even kill a child. All three are also basically extinct, you'll have to camp on the heather for a few years to spot one. Most dangerous animal in our country is the tick, for carrying Lyme's disease.

It's nothing like New Zeeland. NZ has no naturally occurring large predators. Old Zeeland killed off all of theirs and destroyed all wild habitat.

Wouldn't the native wildlife for a lot of the Netherlands technically be fish?

I was going to say, heir localised mass extinction event was called critical oceanic draught.

[Nahere]

It's nothing like New Zeeland. NZ has no naturally occurring large predators. Old Zeeland killed off all of theirs and destroyed all wild habitat.

Not quite true. We had the Haast's eagle, but they died out after their main food source was hunted to extinction. Pretty much everything else here loses to cats and dogs though.

[scriver]

Holy shit I was gonna go all "I said large predators" on you but then I had a random impulse to actually google it before I posted.

That is one big birdie.

[scourge728]

Now go look up the Quetzalcoatlus (which when I was a kid I actually knew how to spell, but now had to look up "largest pterodactyl" to get anything more than list of dragon tale episodes) IIRC largest flying animal to ever live (that or the second largest) and ate dinosaurs

[Helgoland]

Well, there's always the chickenhawk.

[Descan]

Martinuzz, what the hell is an "aurochsen" in English? Aurochs are *extinct.*

[ChairmanPoo]

Martinuzz, what the hell is an "aurochsen" in English? Aurochs are *extinct.*

My friends... welcome... to Neolithic Park

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