Hello Kitty! You have seen her on your eight-year-old cousin’s backpack and your college roommate’s tote bag (“I . . . uh, got this when I was younger!”), on a dress worn by Lady Gaga and the track list of Avril Lavigne’s most recent album. Hello Kitty has become something of a behemoth, reportedly earning its maker Sanrio more than $7 billion a year, an absurd number that seems all the more absurd when considering Sanrio does very little advertising.

Hello Kitty is turning 40 this year, and she is celebrating with a splashy Us Weekly cover (“THAT ‘HELLO’ GLOW: HOW HELLO KITTY FINDS JOY AT 40 AND WHY SHE’LL NEVER SHAVE THOSE WHISKERS”) and a late-night bash at the Gramercy Petco thrown by Olivia Benson and Meredith, Taylor Swift’s cats. Just kidding! She’s actually celebrating with a full-on Los Angeles takeover, as, this fall, a retrospective Hello Kitty exhibit will be going up at the Japanese American National Museum, and the first-ever Hello Kitty Con will take place, as well.

While Kitty endures as a brand, she is, in some ways, an enigma. What happened to her mouth? Is she sad about not having a mouth, or has she comes to terms with it? Who gave her that pink bow? Is there a Mr. Hello Kitty?! Does she yearn for more out of life—or, at the very least, for a new outfit to wear?

Well, we have a few answers, thanks to a Los Angeles Times report out today—but, we must warn you, these may rupture the foundation on which you have lived your entire life, so tread carefully. According to Hello Kitty scholar Christine R. Yano (who wrote a book about Hello Kitty), the cat we know and love is . . . not a cat. “Hello Kitty is not a cat,” Yano says. “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.” Um, are you going to tell us next that Lassie is “not a dog”? Is Mickey Mouse a crocodile? What kind of animals are the Berenstain Bears, Christine R. Yano, WHAT KIND OF ANIMALS ARE THE BERENSTAIN BEARS?!?!

So, if Kitty isn’t a cat, what is she? Apparently, according to Yano, her name is “Kitty White,” and she is the daughter of George and Mary White. "She has a twin sister,” Yano says. “She's a perpetual third-grader. She lives outside of London. I could go on. A lot of people don't know the story and a lot don't care. But it's interesting because Hello Kitty emerged in the 1970s, when the Japanese and Japanese women were into Britain. They loved the idea of Britain. It represented the quintessential idealized childhood, almost like a white picket fence. So the biography was created exactly for the tastes of that time."

Yes, Hello Kitty is a third-grade HUMAN girl who can NEVER PROGRESS PAST THIRD GRADE, and who has a mysterious twin sister, whom she may or may not have murdered (we are going to presume the twin's name was Goodbye Kitty). And she lives, not in Japan, but in Britain. We don’t know about you, but we are leaving work right now in shock, horror, and protest. We would ask Hello Kitty for comment, but she doesn’t have a mouth.