Hello Kitty: when is a cat not a cat?

Name: Hello Kitty.

Age: 40.

Appearance: A cat. Just so, so clearly, a cat. Cat ears, whiskers, a tiny feline nose, and weirdly, no mouth. But still obviously a cat, damn it.

OK, OK, I get it. Hello Kitty is a cat. Shocker. That’s the thing – Hello Kitty is not a cat, the creators now claim.

What? This changes everything. Yes, it does. Christine R Yano, an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii, has spent years studying the Hello Kitty phenomenon and even she didn’t know.

How did she find out? She was preparing a script for a Hello Kitty exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum in LA, and Sanrio “very firmly” pointed out that Hello Kitty is not a cat, but a girl. “She’s never depicted on all fours”, they pointed out, and she “walks and sits like a two-legged creature”. She even has a pet cat of her own, called “Charmmy Kitty”.

She also has cat ears and whiskers, though. Yes, they didn’t really explain that bit. Or why they give her height as “five apples” and her weight as an unhealthy sounding “three apples”.

Is she perhaps a British girl with some sort of cat-transformation syndrome? Should we all throw ice water on our heads for her? No, she’s just a girl called Kitty White, with parents called George and Mary White, and she lives in the suburbs of London.

Where? Catford? Caterham? Barking? No one is quite sure. Apparently, when she was designed in the 1970s, Japan was crazy for all things British. Yano told the LA Times, “They loved the idea of Britain … So the biography was created exactly for the tastes of that time.”

I’m inexplicably annoyed about this. You’re not the only one. Josh Groban tweeted: “Hello Kitty is a cat. She has whiskers and a cat nose. Girls don’t look like that. Stop this nonsense.”

Are the fans upset? Apparently not – Yano says that, like us, many people don’t know the story “and a lot don’t care”.

Anything else I should know? Is Goofy still a dog? Is Minnie a mouse? Bugs a bunny? I have no idea. I’m not sure of anything any more.

Would you mind checking? I need to lie down. Of course. I’ll get back to you.

Do say: “Someone still needs to explain the cat ears.”

Don’t say: “I know loads of British girls with whiskers.”