With his comical expressions and determination to squeeze in the tiniest of containers, Maru developed a loyal following. For a time, he held the record for the web’s most popular animal.
Maru the cat, who was once the most-viewed animal on the internet, passed away after a short battle with lung cancer.
The 18-year-old Scottish Fold was one of the first viral animal sensations on the video platform, and his videos have amassed a staggering 578 million views over the years. In 2017, Guinness World Records named him the most popular animal on the internet, lending credence to the joke that the internet was invented to share photos and videos of our feline overlords.
His name, which means “round” in Japanese, was an apt descriptor, and viewers found laughs and distraction while watching his antics. More often than not, his adventures included boxes and other containers he could barely fit in.
For Maru, the smaller the box, the bigger the challenge. Credit: Mugumogu/Youtube
Maru’s face was familiar even to people who weren’t big Youtube watchers, with internet users authoring several popular memes using his image over the years.
Maru’s human, who shared the bad news in a video, said she brought the little guy to the vet when his behavior changed and he stopped eating. His health rapidly deteriorated and he passed away on Sept. 6.
In one of his most-watched videos, the chonky Scottish Fold comically takes a tumble while trying to scale his cat tree, and demonstrates his dedication to laziness by laying on his back, half-heartedly batting his paws at a wand toy while his human tries to get him up.
In the video announcing Maru’s death, his human thanked his fans for being invested in his life for so many years.
“Maru was a laid-back and calm cat,” she wrote, “but at the very last moment he made a mad dash.”
A woman asks Reddit if she overreacted when she tossed her friend out over the way the friend treated her cat.
A Redditor has been assured she didn’t overreact after recounting a disturbing incident involving one of her friends and her cat.
Describing her cat as “super friendly, but a little skittish” and prefacing the anecdote by noting she always asks guests “to be gentle with her,” the Redditor relayed what happened when her cat jumped onto the couch near the seated guest.
“Out of nowhere, my friend shoved her off the couch. Not a little nudge—an actual shove that made her hit the floor hard. My cat ran and hid under my bed, and I lost it. I asked them what the hell that was, and they just laughed and said, ‘Relax, it’s just a cat.'”
“I told them to get out immediately. They acted like I was overreacting, saying they didn’t mean to hurt her and that it wasn’t a big deal. But my cat was terrified, and I don’t care if it was intentional or not—that kind of reaction to an innocent animal is not okay with me.”
The offending party is telling mutual friends that the Redditor “threw them out over ‘nothing,'” but others in their social circle have “admitted they never liked how this friend treated animals.”
Still, some told the woman she may have been too harsh for telling the cat-shover to leave immediately.
What do you think?
Tornado of claws!
For what it’s worth, most people who responded to the AITA (“Am I The Asshole?”) thread sided with the poster, and others pointed out that someone who will casually shove a cat off a couch while the caretaker is right there might do much worse if no one’s around. In other words, don’t let that person watch your cat under any circumstances.
I have never had this problem, obviously, because no one would dare shove my incredibly ripped and meowscular cat.
Jokes aside, I can’t imagine anyone I’m friends with would harm him when they know how much little dude means to me.
And as much of a wimp Bud is when it comes to vacuums, loudly crinkling paper bags and Swiffers, he has absolutely no fear of people. If someone tried to shove or toss him off a couch, I’d actually feel sorry for them, because the next instant would involve 11 pounds of furball screeching like a furious Elmo while producing a tornado of claws.
Reddit’s AITA is a reliable source of insight into antisocial behavior and social faux pas, which makes it fun to browse, but it also offers people a chance to gauge if they’ve overreacted in heated situations.
What would you have done if you were in the Redditor’s shoes?
It’s International Cat Day, which means you should totally do awesome stuff for your cat.
Hello there, PITB readers! I have taken over the blog from my inept human on this most auspicious of days, International Cat Day, to offer some great suggestions on how to honor your feline overlord!
Let’s get right into it, shall we?
10) Human snacks: Let’s be serious here for a moment. I’m sick of getting the same old crunchy treats, meaty sticks, soft Buddy Biscuits, Churus and party mix. I want cheese! I want filet mignon! I want roast turkey! I want a cheeseburger! Day after day we have to sit here, our mouths watering as you humans stuff your faces with all sorts of food we would love to eat. Well, today’s the day. Start cookin’, servants!
Yes! More cheese, hold the lettuce and tomatoes. Credit: Juan Santos/Pexels
9) Roombas. That’s right. It’s 2024 and I still don’t have a Roomba. I’m very angry about that. When do I get my mighty steed? Let it be today!
8) Catnip and silvervine. Sure, we get these on other days, but this day absolutely must not go by without you giving us at least a few doses of the good stuff. Hurry up! I need to get my fix!
7) Sweet cat drip that shows you’re owned by a cat. My Big Buddy just got two t-shirts. One shows a roaring jaguar with the word “Savage,” because I am savage, and the other is a kitty samurai with a cool sword. Aside from the fact that this is premium drip, everyone will know that you answer to a fluffy, benevolent overlord back home. That’s what’s important.
The drip.
6) A throne. I’ve wanted a throne since I was a kitten. It doesn’t need to be an Iron Throne with the melted swords of everyone I’ve conquered, a la Game of Thrones. It can be something humble, made of gilded metal, velvet cushions and maybe a lion crest or cool tiger heads on the paw rests. I’m not picky as long as it looks awesome. What’s important is the symbolism and comfort.
5) Hire a mariachi band to parade through the streets hoisting an image of your cat, performing songs in your feline overlord’s honor. This is another humble offering that says “I serve a cat, and I’m proud of it!” When people ask what the hell is going on, hand them Cuban cigars and say “We are celebrating el jefe!” They’ll know who you mean.
“We sing of the great, wise, handsome and meowscular Buddy the Cat!”
4) Hire a portraitist to paint your kitty. Again, it doesn’t have to be extravagant. As a humble cat, I don’t mind being portrayed as a naval commodore, a king, a great warrior of world renown, or a massive tiger. The important thing is that it looks cool and you hang the picture above the couch in the living room. Get on it, human.
3) Massages. Schedule them throughout the day, sprinkling them around naps and meal times. Do you know how satisfying it is to enjoy a nice massage after Food O’Clock? I like to have my chin rubbed and the top of my head scratched while being told what a good, handsome, awesome, amazing, handsome, meowscular feline I am.
2) Toys. Not just for Christmas, you know. In fact, go ahead and consider this Kitty Christmas In Summer. Wand toys, track toys, new boxes, those little plastic ring things from milk gallon containers, stuffed animals that we can hunt and murder like the apex predators we are. You don’t have to wrap them, just bend the knee and present them as tribute. You’ll have our thanks, and our favor.
1)Hang out with us! It really is that simple. The most important thing you can do on International Cat Day is spend time with your cat! Many of the above suggestions fall under this category, including playing with us, giving us massages and reading epic poems you’ve composed about us. Personally I like settling down to nap on top of my Big Buddy after a massage. There’s something about having my chin scratched that makes me start yawning, and there’s no better place to nap than on my human, where it’s safe and there’s body heat and he can’t get up to use the bathroom because it would disturb me. That’s love.
I hope these suggestions are helpful! I’ve tried to list really easy, basic, humble stuff, but if you feel like constructing a 426-room cardboard box castle, well, I won’t stop you. In fact, that would be pretty cool. But like I said, the most important thing is that we get to hang out with you. And eat filet mignon.
Amazon’s response not only leaves a lot to be desired, it’s also an example of precisely what not to do when an issue goes beyond a simple customer service complaint. The company missed an opportunity to respond with compassion and earn a family’s gratitude.
An Amazon delivery driver took a Washington family’s cat and drove away with her on July 21.
Since then, Amazon has admitted its driver has the cat, but has offered little more than carefully-worded customer service responses mixed with boilerplate language about valuing the family’s business and feedback.
Ray and Karin Ishak have video of the driver petting and playing with 13-year-old Feefee in the family’s driveway during the delivery. The motion-activated camera timed out, according to a report by Seattle ABC affiliate KING5-TV, but when the camera began recording again, triggered by the driver pulling away, Feefee was gone.
“The driver [was] driving away and there’s not a cat in sight. It’s pretty obvious the cat disappeared in those seconds,” Ray Ishak told the station, adding he filed a report with the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.
An Amazon driver playing with Feefee in the Ishak family’s driveway before driving away with the cat. Credit: Ray Ishak
Amazon has chosen to deal with the incident via email, as if it’s a dispute over a returned item rather than a living being who is valued as a family member by her people.
A company customer service representative told the Ishaks that the driver said she contacted the police to return Feefee, but the family called the sheriff’s office and the police in Everett, Washington, where they live, and both agencies told them they hadn’t heard from the driver or from Amazon.
The Ishaks asked Amazon if the company could at least tell them the town or city where the driver lives, figuring the driver may have contacted police there instead of the departments that have jurisdiction over their hometown. Amazon declined to provide that information.
When the Ishaks followed up with Amazon again, a customer service representative said she’d be happy to help — if the police approach Amazon. She provided an email address for law enforcement use only, said Amazon will cooperate if the police contact them, and ended the reply with a request to “vote about your experience today.”
This is an awful response by Amazon, and the company deserves any bad PR it gets as a result. The very first thing the company should have done was escalate the ticket to a manager empowered to take care of the case directly, and that manager should have picked up the phone, called the family and promised to get their cat back immediately.
If the company doesn’t have anyone in its customer care hierarchy who understands why it’s important to make that kind of judgment call, then it’s done a poor job of hiring and training its employees.
Treating this like a routine complaint only exacerbated the Ishak family’s stress and uncertainty regarding the fate of their beloved cat. Putting the onus on the family and the police to sort out of the problem makes things worse, and you’d think any halfway competent customer service rep would skip the “rate your service” pitch, at least until after the problem is solved and Feefee is back with her family.
Ray Ishak said Feefee’s disappearance has been especially hard on his grandchildren, who love the gentle feline. Credit: Ray Ishak
It doesn’t matter how massive and successful the company is, there has to be a better way to handle issues like this without requiring even the police to approach Amazon like customers dialing a service line, or supplicants petitioning a king to turn his gaze toward a situation that normally falls beneath his notice. There’s also no recognition of the impact on Feefee, who is almost certainly confused and stressed at being separated from the only home and family she’s known for her entire life.
Lastly, Amazon missed an opportunity to respond with compassion and earn the gratitude of a family whose members are obviously very concerned about their cat. A PR win like that is worth a thousand commercials, and can earn enormous good will with customers. Instead, people will hear about how the company treats a problem like this as if a customer is returning a shirt that’s too small.
As for the Ishak family, they say they’re giving the driver the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she thought Feefee was a stray. But, as Ray Isha told KING5, it’s been made abundantly clear that Feefee is a beloved member of the family, and she needs to be returned.
“Maybe you did this out of the kindness of your heart,” Ray Ishak said. “I appreciate it, but bring me my cat back.”
Top image of Feefee as a kitten with one of Ray Ishak’s grandchildren courtesy of Ray Ishak, via KING5.
Pain In The Bud 