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Hello Kitty a personification of a cat: Sanrio

SINGAPORE – It is going too far to say that Hello Kitty is not a cat. Hello Kitty is, in fact, a personification of a cat, according to a report quoting Sanrio, the Japanese company behind the iconic cartoon character.

Hello Kitty. Photo: Reuters

Hello Kitty. Photo: Reuters

SINGAPORE – It is going too far to say that Hello Kitty is not a cat. Hello Kitty is, in fact, a personification of a cat, according to a report quoting Sanrio, the Japanese company behind the iconic cartoon character.

The Internet was abuzz yesterday (Aug 28) after a Los Angeles Times report quoted anthropologist Christine Yano saying that Hello Kitty is actually not a feline. Yano, who is curating a Hello Kitty exhibition in Los Angeles, said Sanrio had told her that Hello Kitty is a “little girl”, a perpetual third-grader who lives outside of London.

However, when contacted, a Sanrio spokesperson told Kotaku, a news and opinion website for gamers: “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.”

Japanese news blog RocketNews24 reported a Sanrio representative saying: “We never said she was a human.”

And so we have it – Hello Kitty is not a British schoolgirl after all.

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