I imply, I believe the individuals who thought that kitty was a cat are within the majority.

However nope! The beloved cartoon character, now celebrating its fiftieth anniversary—which formally happens on November 1—is most undoubtedly not an animal in any respect, however reasonably somewhat lady of the Homo genus.

At the moment, on July 18, Jill Koch, the Senior Vice President of Advertising and marketing and Model Administration at Sanrio, Howdy Kitty’s flagship firm, defined in six phrases that shortly left us unsettled, “Howdy Kitty just isn’t a cat.”

It wasn’t sufficient, nevertheless, as she continued to expose extra in regards to the character we thought we knew so nicely: “She’s truly somewhat lady born and raised within the suburbs of London. She has a mother and pop and a twin sister, Mimmy—who can be her greatest buddy.”

Her full identify can be Kitty White. Like, what?!

However possibly you probably did know, as a result of this wasn’t the primary time Howdy Kitty had this information circulating round. The truth is, the character made headlines again in 2014, round its fortieth anniversary, for the very same purpose.

Throughout that point, anthropologist Christine R. Yano—who authored Pink Globalization: Howdy Kitty’s Trek Throughout The Pacific—was corrected “very firmly” by Sanrino on the excellence between cat and little lady amid prepping for a Howdy Kitty exhibit on the Los Angeles Museum of Up to date Artwork.

“She’s a cartoon character,” Yano defined to the Los Angeles Occasions. “She is somewhat lady. She is a buddy. However she just isn’t a cat. She’s by no means depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her personal, nevertheless, and it’s known as Charmmy Kitty.”

As for the character’s London roots, Yano defined: “Howdy Kitty emerged within the Nineteen Seventies, when the Japanese and Japanese girls had been into Britain. They cherished the thought of Britain. It represented the quintessential idealized childhood, virtually like a white picket fence. So, the biography was created precisely for the tastes of that point.”

The Japanese firm Sanrio first created Howdy Kitty in 1974. A yr later, her picture, together with her signature crimson bow, was launched to the general public on a young children’s coin purse that bought for lower than a greenback.

Since then, her lovely expressionless face has popped up on toys, clothes and different merchandise across the globe, with its common attraction being the topic of doctoral dissertations.