Hello Kitty *is* a cat — report

Social media was abuzz on Thursday by reports saying that Hello Kitty, the popular Japanese character, was not a cat.

 

The source of the information was Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist at University of Hawaii, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times for a feature on Hello Kitty.

 

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

 

"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."

 

The feature added that the character — real name Kitty White — lives in London with mama Mary White, papa George White, and twin sister Mimmy.

 

The news sparked furious debate online among users who argued whether Hello Kitty was indeed feline or not. "Kitty White" ended up being a worldwide trending topic.

 

But a followup report by gaming website Kotaku quoted a spokesman from Sanrio saying that amid all the fuss, the character was, indeed, a cat.

 

"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," Kotaku quoted the spokesman for the company.

 

Brian Ashcraft, who wrote the Kotaku article, added: "The specific word that the Sanrio spokesperson used to describe Hello Kitty was 'gijinka', which means 'anthropomorphization' or 'personification.'" 

 

The author offered up even more evidence through history that Hello Kitty is, well, a kitty.

 

"Well, when Hello Kitty first appeared in 1974 as a character on a coin purse, she didn't even have a name. The coin purse simply read, 'Hello!' In Japan at that time, the character was known as 'the white cat with no name', as if the character belonged in a Spaghetti Western," Ashcraft wrote. — JST, GMA News