Hello Kitty Is Not A Cat; She Is Just A Weird Looking British Girl

This year marks the 40th birthday of Hello Kitty, a character first created by Japanese designer Yuko Shimizu. 

Since debuting in Japan in 1974, and being brought to America in 1976, Hello Kitty has become a billion dollar business for its parent company Sanrio, with approximately 22,000 products on the market including toys, games, books, music, themed venues and TV shows — and, according to a spread in the November 2007 issue of Glamour, an entire room in Mariah Carey’s house.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the character, the world’s first large scale Hello Kitty museum retrospective is opening at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles on October 11, for a six month run dappled with talks, workshops and Hello Kitty Con 2014. One of the world’s most prominent Hello Kitty experts Christine R. Yano will be appearing — but, while preparing her work for the show, Sanrio gave her one correction that has torn everything you know apart.

As she tells LA Times, Yano described Hello Kitty as a cat in one draft of her speech — and was “very firmly” corrected. “That’s one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show,” she says. “Hello Kitty is not a cat. She’s a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She’s never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it’s called Charmmy Kitty.”

Yep. According to Sanrio, Hello Kitty is not a cat. She is a third-grade British girl with cat ears, whiskers and no mouth who lives just outside of London with her twin sister, and there is nothing left to believe in anymore. See ya.