Every 5 years, the internet loses its collective mind over this Hello Kitty revelation.

Japanese company Sanrio just broke the internet when they revealed that their beloved character Hello Kitty is, in fact, not a cat.

Yes, despite the ears and the whiskers. Not. A. Cat.

And though the confusion it caused is understandable, it's worth noting that Sanrio has made this revelation before. 

They share this tidbit every 5 years or so, and each time, it sends the internet into a whirlwind.

The adorable... feline-presenting mascot... is among the planet's most beloved cartoon characters, raking in approximately $5 billion in annual sales for Sanrio. However, it turns out, Hello Kitty isn't even her real name.

Hello Kitty's legal name is Kitty White. 

Looks like a cat to us. Image: Sanrio.

"She's actually a little girl born and raised in the suburbs of London," Jill Cook, director of retail business development at Sanrio told NBC Today, on a special segment dedicated to Hello Kitty's 50th anniversary.

"She has a mum and a dad and a twin sister Mimmy, who is also her best friend."

And despite her looking like a cat, she's actually a child. Yeah, we don't really get it either. 

"Her core message is friendship, kindness and inclusivity and part of what has helped her transcend borders, languages, cultures is that that's understandable to everyone," said Jill.

While Kitty is not a cat, she does own a pet kitten called Charmmy Kitty, and even has a boyfriend named Dear Daniel.

If you feel like you're in a fever dream, then we're right there with you.

Image: Hello Kitty/Sanrio

This is what Hello Kitty looks like. As you can see, she has a cat head, whiskers and pointy ears, and a cat body, including a tail.

So, it’s only natural that in the 50 years since Hello Kitty burst out of Japan and onto the international scene, everybody just assumed she was a Japanese cat.

But every time Sanrio commemorates an anniversary by dropping this little tidbit, they receive the exact same reaction. What on earth?

Even if you knew beforehand, it's still hard to digest. It's like when we found out Bluey is a girl, or when we realised that Disney's Goofy owns a pet dog... despite being a dog himself. 

"So she has whiskers, ears, and is named ‘Kitty,’ but is actually human? What?" commented a user underneath a TikTok video posted by the Today Show, which has been viewed over 28 million times.

@todayshow Fact #1 is Hello Kitty Is NOT a cat, but a little girl originally from London! #HelloKitty ♬ original sound - TODAY Show

"Her name is lit Hello KITTY," wrote another.

Others were baffled by Hello Kitty's nationality.

"Wait, she is not from Japan…" said one user.

Essentially, everything you thought you knew turned out to be one big fat lie.

In 2014, anthropologist and Harvard professor Christine R. Yano, who literally wrote the book on Hello Kitty  (“Pink Globalisation: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific”) curated a Hello Kitty retrospective at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

When she sent her notes to Sanrio (the company behind Hello Kitty) for approval, they got back to her with some fairly important corrections. Yano told The LA Times:

“That’s one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. 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.”

Yano further revealed that Hello Kitty actually has quite a detailed and specific backstory: including being a twin, living with her mum, dad, grandma and grandpa, being a Scorpio and having an A blood type.

And if you weren't already confused, Sanrio told Sora News 24 in 2014 that when she was described as a "little girl," they "never said she was human."

Feature Image: Getty.