Hello Kitty is not actually a cat, her creators Sanrio have said.
In preparing a Hello Kitty retrospective for the Japanese American National Museum, University of Hawaii Anthropologist Christine R. Yano was given one major correction by Hello Kittyowners Sanrio: She is not a cat.
“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,” Sanrio said.
She is a British school girl called Kitty White and she lives just outside London, although no-one is saying exactly where.
In fact, Kitty has a whole life story and a family that includes a twin sister called Mimmy.
Although Sanrio has a whole website dedicated to Kitty’s biography, her appearance has suggested that she is animal rather than human – an assumption that also fooled Christine R. Yano.
“That’s one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat,” Christine R. Yano told the LA Times.
“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 claims a lot of people don’t know Kitty’s really a person and that many of her fans who are aware “don’t care”.
And the reason Kitty is British?
“Hello Kitty emerged in the 1970s, when the Japanese and Japanese women were into Britain,” said Christine R. Yano.
“They loved the idea of Britain. It represented the quintessential idealized childhood, almost like a white picket fence.
“So the biography was created exactly for the tastes of that time.”
Hello Kitty lives in the suburbs of London and is approximately five apples tall and was born on November 1.
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