This is as devastating as when they came out with Paper by Paperless Post.

Sanrio, Kitty’s manufacturer, corrected the curator of an LA exhibit on this ubiquitous icon when she tried to label Hello Kitty a cat, according to the LA Times. Curator and Hello Kitty expert Christine Yano said the company informed her that “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. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it’s called Charmmy Kitty.”

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Hello Kitty is, in fact, according to Yano, a “perpetual third-grader.” She has a twin. “She lives outside of London. I could go on.”

DON’T! “Hello, Little Girl” just doesn’t have the same ring to it at all. In fact, it’s downright creepy. In fact, all the household items (backpacks, toothbrushes, golf bags, makeup kits, car key doodads) that are fine when they have the image of a stylized cat on them become quite alarming when they turn out to be pictures of a young British girl.

I did in fact know about Charmmy Kitty before. But I always assumed that owning another, smaller cat was just an act of weird sadism on Hello Kitty’s part, the way you see Micky Mouse goofing around with Goofy while owning Pluto. But who knows. Mickey may not actually be a mouse at this point. Mickey is probably a five year-old German boy with six siblings who lives near Frankfurt and likes to go to the airport to watch the airplanes land. Oscar the Grouch is probably just a resident of Cleveland with a skin condition. Anything could be true of any animal at this point. Rocket Raccoon is probably not a raccoon after all. After all, he doesn’t think he’s a raccoon, and it’s how you self-identify that matters.

All in all, this is deeply disturbing. This is worse than when I learned that Big Bird’s age was supposed to be four. But who’s to say he’s a bird. Probably he’s just an adult American man in a bird costume. Or something equally crazy like that.

Everything’s a lie.