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By Tara Mulholland, CNN<\/p>\n
Kabosu, the internet-famous dog who inspired the \u201cdoge\u201d meme<\/a> and influenced digital culture for a decade, is seriously ill with leukemia and liver disease.<\/p>\n The 17-year-old shiba inu stopped \u201ceating and drinking voluntarily\u201d on Christmas Eve, and has been diagnosed with acute cholangiohepatitis and chronic lymphoma leukemia, according to a series of Instagram<\/a> posts by her owner Atsuko Sato<\/a>, a kindergarten teacher in Sakura, Japan.<\/p>\n While Sato said Kabosu\u2019s appetite had returned, she had previously blogged<\/a> that the dog was moving around less, and more slowly.<\/p>\n Kabosu became one of the most recognizable animals on the internet when a 2010 photo of her posing with folded paws and a quizzical expression spread across Reddit, Tumblr and 4Chan, overlaid with an imagined inner monologue in broken English using scattered Comic Sans text. Internet users soon began photoshopping Kabosu\u2019s face onto pastries, landmarks and other animals. The meme was later co-opted by brands like Oreo<\/a> and Stockholm\u2019s subway.<\/p>\n The popularity of the \u201cdoge\u201d meme was cemented in December 2013, when two programmers introduced an alternative cryptocurrency called Dogecoin as a tongue-in-cheek response to Bitcoin that reflected the internet\u2019s love of animal memes. It reached a peak value of more than $400 in 2014, and is considered the first \u201cmeme coin\u201d or satire<\/a> of cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n