Goodbye Roomba Cat! RIP Max, The Roomba Shark Cat

Former viral sensation Max the Roomba shark cat has passed over the rainbow bridge into kitty heaven.

The sad news was shared last night on Facebook, where Max's human, Helen Jurlau Arnold, penned a heartfelt goodbye to her beloved pet.

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According to the memoriam, the striking snowshoe/siamese mouser succumbed to cancer just shy of his 16th birthday.

One of YouTube's first cat stars to build a mass following, Max rose to internet fame after he was cast as a supporting player in videos featuring his "brother" Sharky, a lovable pit bull who passed away himself in 2014.

The duo would routinely cuddle with a unlikely menagerie of fuzzy critters — baby chicks, bunnies, lizards, and more — and YouTubers eagerly lapped it up.

Max stepped into a leading role in 2008 when he was recorded casually chilling atop a spinning robo-vac. Viewed more than 3.6+ million times, that clip (embedded below) would spawn a raft of parodies, copy cats, and cat-on-Roomba memes.

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Future videos would riff on variants of the same script but it was only after he was garbed in a shark costume — originally purchased, as lore would have it, for Sharky — that Max's status as an internet A-lister went full supernova.

Appearances at BuzzFeed ("The Internet Has Peaked"), People, The Colbert Report, Animal Planet, and even a safety video commissioned by Delta Airlines followed in short succession, as would a nomination for the Golden Kitty Award at the 2013 Internet Video Film Festival (an honor subsequently bestowed on none other than Grumpy Cat).

Below: Some additional pictures of the dearly departed.

With his human mom, Helen.

RIP Max the Roomba shark cat, we'll miss your adorable antics!

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