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. In early September 2025, Maru the cat died, leading to an outpouring of tributes and posts online.

Origin

Maru was born on May 24th, 2007. His anonymous owner launched the photo blog "I am Maru"^[2] in November 2007 to curate photos of his cat. Maru's official YouTube channel mugumogu^[1] was created almost a year later in July 2008, showcasing Maru's daily adventures in short video format. As of May 2013, mugumogu's channel has more than 330,000 subscribers, 210 million views overall and averages approximately 118,000 views per day. At one point, the channel was the 8th Most Subscribed channel and 11th Most Viewed YouTube channel of all time in Japan.

Spread

Throughout 2008, Maru's YouTube channel was featured on 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^[10] and Ebaum's World.^[11] 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.

Awards

In August 2009, Entertainment Weekly^[5] listed the video channel in its "Notable Kitty Videos" article, alongside Keyboard Cat and Nora the Piano Cat.

In 2008 and 2009, Maru won YouTube Japan's video awards in the Pet / Animal category^[7][8] for two consecutive years. In August 2010, Maru was voted the Internet's Favorite Feline in Urlesque's "Catfight" event,^[21] beating the Ceiling Cat in the final round.

On March 27th, 2017, Maru was named YouTube's most-watched animal by Guinness World Records.^[23] As of June 2019, Maru has more than 325 million views.

Interview

In April 2010, the cat blog LoveMeow^[20] published a transcript of an interview with the blogger behind Maru's YouTube channel and websites.

Amy: Why do you like boxes so much?
Maru: I don’t know why, but I can’t seem to stop going into a box when I see one. It just gets me so excited!

Amy: What else do you like besides boxes?
Maru: I love hanging out on top of a cat tree, by the window and in the bathroom.

Amy: Do you prefer big boxes or small boxes?
Maru: When I nap I like a small box because it is snug and fits me just right. However, when I play, I prefer a huge one.

Commercial Success

On September 1st, 2009, the first Maru photobook was published in Japan.^[14] Over a year later in August 2010, a second book^[15] and compilation DVD were released.^[16] Maru's videos have been featured in more than one commercial as well, including a web advertisement for the cat food brand Fresh Step^[8] as well as other commercials for various products sold in Japan.

Death

On September 6th, 2025, the I am Maru. YouTube^[24] channel made a community post announcing that Maru the cat had passed away. The post, which received over 12,000 likes and 3,100 comments in two days, read:

To everyone who always supports Maru. Maru went to heaven today, Saturday, September 6, at 7:15 a.m.

Maru has become very sick in the past week. Until 2 weeks ago, he had a good appetite, ate every meal and weighed 6 kilograms. I will explain what happened after that step by step. Sorry for the long story.

From the middle of August, Maru started to lose his appetite somehow, and he started to leave about 1/3 of the rice he used to finish.
But there were no other symptoms that bothered me, and even though he said he lost his appetite, he was happy to eat a lot of chicken when I boiled it for him.

On Sunday, August 31, I felt a little uncomfortable with his breathing. His usual breathing was not rapid, not irregular, or coughing, but when he purred and rumbled, his shoulders seemed to move more forcefully than usual.

On Monday, September 1, at the usual animal hospital, I told him that his appetite was decreasing and the above mentioned discomfort in breathing. When we took him to the hospital, they also decided to take an X-ray of his chest because it was true that he wasn't breathing fast, but he was breathing a little louder. When I looked at the X-ray, both lungs were entirely white. There is definitely inflammation in your lungs, so they decided to do an echo test. I could not say for sure, but there was a suspicion of lymphoma (cancer), so I should have a detailed examination such as a CT scan in order to decide the course of treatment, and I was referred to a large animal hospital. And I was able to make an appointment for a checkup at a big veterinary clinic at 10:00 AM the next day.

Tuesday, September 2 I drove about an hour to a large animal hospital, worried that his breathing was a little more difficult than yesterday. Before taking a CT scan, I was told that I needed to be tested to see if I could tolerate the general anesthesia for the CT scan, so I started taking X-rays and testing again. When I looked at the X-ray pictures of the lungs again, I was told that both lungs were white overall, and that there was also water in them, which was not seen yesterday. They measured his blood oxygen level, which was only 74%, and said he would not be able to withstand a CT scan under general anesthesia, which required him to stop breathing.

At that time, the doctor's first diagnosis was that it might not have come from a tumor.

If the cancer has spread so far that the entire lung turns white, it should cause more early symptoms. If it was due to cancer, he lost weight as his fur became shabby, cancer deprived him of nutrients, he started breathing faster and coughing, none of which applied to him. Although he lost his appetite, he didn't lose much weight at 5.9 kilograms and his fur was shiny.

There are several causes of water accumulation in the lungs, and the treatment depends on the cause. So I was given sedation, which is less stressful than general anesthesia, and at the same time I had to take a sample of lung water, I had to do a blood test (because I couldn't take blood without sedation). As a result, it seems to be cancer. And it's not lymphoma, it's lung adenocarcinoma. Anti-cancer drugs are relatively effective for lymphoma, but anti-cancer drugs are not effective for lung adenocarcinoma, and there is no effective treatment method. And considering that the water which was not seen yesterday was standing today, the observation was that the speed of the progress was very fast. I could stay in the hospital, but I was also told that there was a very high possibility that I would die in the hospital within a few days.

I was in a state of confusion, but anyway, I wanted to avoid the situation where he was left in the hospital … which he hated, so I quickly rented an oxygen room, and he was hospitalized overnight in the oxygen room of the usual animal hospital near my house, and the next day, when the oxygen room was ready at home, I went to pick him up.

The lung water was to be tested by an outside laboratory to identify the type of cancer. I was hoping that it was lymphoma that could be treated with anticancer drugs, but on Friday, September 5, the results came out and I was diagnosed with lung adenocarcinoma. And he's been in and out of the oxygen chamber at home, but his lung adenocarcinoma is growing so fast, it's such a sudden announcement.

I posted a regular video the day before yesterday, but it was shot between May and July, and I wanted to upload Maru's daily life, so I apologize for not being able to tell you any details at that time.

Maru was a laid-back and calm cat, but at the very last moment he made a mad dash… Thank you for supporting Maru until the end.

Following the announcement of Maru's death, numerous users across various social media platforms reacted to the event and posted tributes online in early September 2025.

For instance, on September 6th, X / Twitter^[25] user @iloveairbagged posted a clip of Maru alongside an RIP message, receiving over 4,500 views, 200 likes, 30 retweets and 10 replies in two days.

The news of Maru's passing also spread on Reddit in early September 2025, such as a post to the /r/cats^[26] subreddit on September 7th that received over 18,000 upvotes in a day, and a post to /r/seniorkitties^[27] shortly after, which garnered over 1,100 upvotes in a similar timeframe.

On September 8th, 2025, the official Guinness World Records Twitter^[28] (@GWR) account then tweeted a tribute to Maru, noting his record for squishing himself into tiny cardboard boxes alongside the caption, "Maru the cat, who broke record by squishing himself into tiny cardboard boxes, dies at 18." The tweet received over 7,200 views and 50 likes in four hours.

Various Examples

Related Memes

Derivative: X Sliding In

In July 2009, the trend of using characters drawn with cat ears and tails sliding into cardboard boxes emerged on the Japanese video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga. It was then called "すべりこむちぇん" ^[22] (Chen sliding in) and featured a well-known catgirl character from the Touhou Project series. It also used the soundtrack from the squeak! squeak! squeak! meow! dance, the "meow!" sound indicating the moment when the character is seen sliding into the box.

For more information about that particular phenomenon, please check the KYM entry for X Sliding In.

Search Interest

External References