Hello Kitty Not A Cat? Creator Sanrio Clarifies Feline Status, Confuses Us Even More

Is Hello Kitty not a cat? That’s the allegation flying around the internet, but Japanese creator Sanrio claims this idea is not quite accurate. However, their actual classification of the quasi-feline may leave many feeling even more befuddled.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, the idea that Hello Kitty is not a cat started with a Los Angeles Times article that quoted Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii. Yano was preparing a written text for a Hello Kitty exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum when someone at Sanrio supposedly claimed Helly Kitty was actually a little girl, not a feline.

“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. 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.”

According to Kotaku, when they spoke to a representative in Sanrio’s Tokyo headquarters, this statement was not accurate, although their clarification was a little confusing in of itself.

“Hello Kitty was done in the motif of a cat. It’s going too far to say that Hello Kitty is not a cat. Hello Kitty is a personification of a cat.”

Sanrio asked, “Then, it would be going too far to say that Hello Kitty was not a cat?”

The spokesperson replied, “Yes, that would be going too far.”

In addition, the specific Japanese word used to describe Hello Kitty was “gijinka,” which means “anthropomorphization” or “personification.”

Sanrio also says Hello Kitty cannot be compared to the Peanuts character Snoopy since he lives in a doghouse while Hello Kitty lives in a human house. Of course, Hello Kitty can’t (or should not) live in a cathouse since that means something entirely different.