Hello Kitty Is Not a Cat, Apparently

If you’ve been assuming Hello Kitty is a cat for the last 50 years you would, in fact, be completely wrong.

In a segment on Today on July 18, Jill Koch, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Brand Management at Sanrio, explained, “Hello Kitty is not a cat.” Going further, Koch says, “She’s actually a little girl born and raised in the suburbs of London; she has a mom and dad and a twin sister, Mimmy – who is also her best friend.”

The revelation has caused varying degrees of havoc across the internet today, but it’s an interesting distinction that Sanrio seems unusually insistent on. Ten years ago, for the character’s 40th anniversary, a similar detail emerged after a curator named Christine Yano was corrected for a Hello Kitty exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

“I was corrected — very firmly. That’s one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. 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,” said Yano “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.”

It’s clear that Sanrio wants its most iconic character to be recognized in a specific way, but considering the shock sweeping the internet, they may not be exactly succeeding in that regard.

2024 marks the 50th anniversary of the iconic Hello Kitty, a character that has been featured in countless pieces of merchandise and media over the decades, even crossing over with the likes of Gundam, Godzilla, Monster Hunter, Garfield, Jujutsu Kaisen, and more. The character also has a balloon featured in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Hello Kitty was created in 1974 by Yuko Shimizu, but is currently designed by Yuko Yamaguchi.