"On August 26th, 2014 just ahead of the first Hello Kitty Con 2014, the LA Times reported that Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii, discovered in a discussion with Sanrio that Kitty White was not, in fact, a cat, describing her as being a little English girl called Kitty White from outside London. While many news sources echoed the sentiment,[10][11] Preston Phro of RocketNews24 called Sanrio directly for clarification. The Sanrio PR representative said, "We never said she was a human," and also explained the concept of anthropomorphization, "Hello Kitty is a 擬人化 (gijinka), a personification or anthropomorphization. Basically just like Micky Mouse...No one would mistake the Disney character for a human–but at the same time he’s not quite a mouse. Just like Hello Kitty isn’t a human, she’s not quite a cat either.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello_Kitty
