SINGAPORE — Life, as we know it, is over.

Hello Kitty may have whiskers and cat-ears, but its creator Sanrio has revealed that the expressionless cat is ... really not a cat after all.

According to Christine Yano, who is curating a Hello Kitty exhibition in Los Angeles, the company told her that Hello Kitty is in fact a “little girl”.

Say what?

“I was corrected — very firmly,” Yano told the Los Angeles Times. “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.”

And, just in case you were wondering, Yano says Hello Kitty is actually named Kitty White, and is a Scorpio that loves apple pie. She is the daughter of George and Mary White, and has a twin sister. The 40-year-old non-cat is also a perpetual third-grader who lives outside of London.

So if Hello Kitty is really a little British girl, then we might have to take a few days off work to re-evaluate everything in our lives.

But in the meantime, click through the photos above to take a look at some of our favourite cartoon characters, and (possibly) their true identities.