Celebrity dog Kabosu, a Japanese Shiba Inu and the face of cryptocurrency Dogecoin, died on May 24 at the ripe age of 19.
Announcing Kabosu’s death in a blog, her owner Atsuko Sato, a kindergarten teacher in Japan's Sakura, said: "Kabosu, fell into a deep sleep. Kabosu is at rest now."
A farewell party will be held for Kabosu, who was adopted by Sato in 2008, on May 26. She had been diagnosed with cholangiohepatitis, a condition leading to inflammation of the bile ducts and gall bladder, and chronic lymphoma leukaemia in 2022, news agencies reported.
A photograph of the Shiba Inu, bright almond-shaped eyes gazing at the camera, paws folded, gained fame as the meme theme Doge that went viral on social media from 2010.
It became the face of cryptocurrency Dogecoin in 2013 - meant to be a parody initially of the cryptocurrency craze.
Elon Musk’s love for the Doge meme is well known. He replaced the Twitter homepage logo once with the meme, and also showed the meme sitting in a chair, wearing a CEO t-shirt, with the caption, "The new CEO of Twitter is amazing."
In 2022, Musk’s electric carmaker Tesla allowed purchase of brand merchandise using Dogecoin.
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