YouTube’s Greatest Hero, Maru The Cat, Becomes A Fashion Icon….Sort Of

Champion of the Internet and probably the world’s most famous cat, Maru, is now selling designer clothing for Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo. We’ve talked a lot about human YouTube celebrities breaking into commercials and acting gigs, but what about those kings of the Internet — cats and their crazy shenanigans. Are we so obsessed with our own humanity that we must ignore the accomplishments of our four-legged feline friends? I, for one, won’t stand for it any longer. In light of this personal revelation, here is some information about a cat selling clothes to humans.

For those of you tragically uninformed, Maru is YouTube’s biggest cat celebrity. Listen, I know how that sentence sounds; I’m just asking you to go with it, okay?

Anyway, Maru is known for a famous video in which he dives head first into empty boxes of yogurt. That very same video has over 14 million views and was recently a nominee in the first annual cat film festival. Again, I’m asking you to just go with it.

On their official blog, Maru’s owner — who, based on owning a cat of that caliber must be Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda — posted that Maru is now the spokesperson for Uniqlo’s interactive web contest that looks something like this:

Basically, if you sign up for the interactive contest, Maru will jump into a random box labeled with prizes that range from “mystery prize” to “blimp ride.” All that is needed to play is a Facebook login. Check it out for yourself and win some awesome prizes (read: the only prize that matters is the blimp ride). Congratulations, Maru, and congratulations, internet.

Now, I will leave you with the hauntingly poetic results of my Google translation from Japanese to English on Maru’s blog:

Maru: Because my dish is empty, I am discouraged.
If there is a heaping bowlful of dry food here,
it gives me motivation.

Hey Maru, if you eat a heaping bowlful of dry food,
What do you want to do at first?

Maru: I will surely sleep