An executive for parent company Sanrio set off a reaction after saying the iconic character with a cat-shaped head is a human third-grader from London. She wears a big red bow on her cat-shaped head, her face has whiskers, and her name is Hello Kitty. But once again the iconic character’s parent company is saying she’s no feline.
“Hello Kitty is not a cat,” Jill Koch, senior vice president of marketing and brand management at Sanrio, told America’s Today show ahead of the brand’s 50th-anniversary celebrations. “She’s actually a little girl born and raised in the suburbs of London. She has a mom and dad and a twin sister Mimmy, who is also her best friend.
” The character has a boyfriend and has her own pet cat, named Charmmy Kitty. “So if she’s a little girl, how come her head is cat-shaped?” one commenter wrote on YouTube..
