14 DAY TRIAL // If you're looking for the wackiest, most insane piece of news ever, look no further. Here it is: Hello Kitty is not actually a cat, but a British little girl who lives in London, UK, with her friends and family.
Now let us all take a few moments to give our heads a proper scratch, pick our jaws off the floor, shout out “say what?!” a few dozen times, and feel the world around us plunging into chaos.
The positively shocking announcement that Hello Kitty is not a cat (if you're feeling the need to let out a few more “say what?!”s, now is your chance) was made by a University of Hawaii anthropologist named Christine R. Yano.
Christine R. Yano, who has been studying Hello Kitty for about 2 years now, says that, while readying some texts for a Hello Kitty exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum, she made the mistake to call her a “cat.”
She was immediately corrected by Sanrio, the Japanese company that created Hello Kitty. “That's one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She's a cartoon character,” the anthropologist told the LA Times in an interview.
“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,” Christine R. Yano added.
Sure enough, it turns out that nowhere in Hello Kitty's bio does it say that she is a cat. On the contrary, Sanrio really does describe her as a happy little girl that likes to bake cookies, make origami, play tennis, and collect stars and ribbons.
“Hello Kitty loves to bake and she can make really delicious cookies. She learned her baking talents from her mama, who makes scrumptious apple pies that are enjoyed by the whole family,” Sanrio writes.
Furthermore, “Hello Kitty's hobbies include traveling, listening to music, reading, eating cookies and mama's apple pies, and making new friends. One of her most popular mottos is ‘You can never have too many friends.’”
Her real name isn't even Hello Kitty. It's Kitty White. Even more shocking, she has a twin sister named Mimmy, who, not at all surprisingly, is her best friend. She was born on November 1, which makes her a Scorpio, and she has type A blood.
Although Sanrio has not yet made any official comments on it, it looks like Hello Kitty does not have a mouth because her creators wanted people to be able to relate to her regardless of their own mood. “It's so that people who look at her can project their own feelings onto her face, because she has an expressionless face.”
“Kitty looks happy when people are happy. She looks sad when they are sad. For this psychological reason, we thought she shouldn't be tied to any emotion - and that's why she doesn't have a mouth,” Yuko Yamaguchi, the current official designer of Hello Kitty, said in a recent interview.
Supposing she is a little girl and not a cat, why is it then that Hello Kitty has whiskers? And cat-like ears? Are we to assume she, her family, and her friends are all the result of some weird genetic experiment? These are just some of the questions people worldwide are probably asking themselves right about now.