Cats of the Internet #2: Maru

This is from http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/maru-the-cat

About

Maru (まる, Japanese: circle or round) is a male Scottish Fold cat from Japan who has become well-known in the YouTube community for the videos of him playing in a childlike fashion, mostly lying around, jumping into small cardboard boxes and sliding across his owner’s wooden floor.

Origin

Maru’s photo blog titled “I am Maru”^[2] was first launched in November 2007 by his anonymous owner, five months after Maru was born on May 24th, 2007. The official YouTube channel mugumogu^[1] was created almost a year later in July 2008, featuring Maru’s daily adventures in short video format.

As of March 2012, mugumogu’s channel reached over 145,000,000 total upload views and is ranked the 8th Most Subscribed channel and 11th Most viewed YouTube channel of all time in Japan.

Spread

Throughout 2008, Maru’s YouTube channel made its round across popular Internet culture blogs like BoingBoing^[3], Neatorama^[4] and Urlesque^[6]. In the following year, Maru’s videos were linked in numerous cat-related hubsites like I Can Has Cheezburger^[9], CuteOverload and Ebaum’s World. Maru’s videos also appeared on Sundance Channel’s SUNfiltered blog^[12] and tech news blog Laughing Squid.^[13]

Meanwhile in Japan, Maru’s videos were featured in NHK’s variety program Exclusve! Post Pictures and World News segment as the “world’s most famous cat,” accruing between 800,000 and 3,600,000 views during the month of June 2009 alone.

The news media coverage of Maru continued throughout 2010; In March 2010, The Los Angeles Times’ Unleashed Blog^[17] published an article titled “Your Morning Adorable YouTube Star: Maru the Cat”; In June 2010, a video clip of Maru was showcased during an episode of the Ellen Degeneres show^[19]; In July 2010, The New York Times^[18]mentioned Maru in an article about the popularity of cats and dogs in the media titled “On Films and TV, Cats and Dogs Playing Cute.”

Following the March 2011 earthquakes in Japan, it was reported via Maru’s blog that the cat was safe and unharmed, though a carrying case was prepared in the event of an evacuation.