Guess it’s actually time to say good-bye? Fans everywhere are reeling with the unexpected news that cartoon icon Hello Kitty is in fact NOT a cat. This bombshell was dropped in a LA Times article published August 26th. The article details the October opening of the Hello Kitty retrospective at the Japanese American National Museum and contains a shattering interview with its curator, Hello Kitty expert Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist who is also currently guest-lecturing at Harvard.

“Hello Kitty is not a cat,” Yano comments. “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 specifies this information came directly from Sanrio, who created Hello Kitty in 1974 in Japan and brought her to America 2 years later. She directs fans to Sanrio’s website, which includes Kitty’s surprising backstory: she has a last name (White) and lives with her parents and twin sister in England. Perhaps most interesting: she herself has a pet cat, Charmmy Kitty.

The internet continues to explode with fans who are shocked by the revelation. Singer Katy Perry’s tweet about the subject has been retweeted almost 8,000 times. Linkin Park rapper Mike Shinoda spoke for many when he tweeted, “I just got off stage to find out that Hello Kitty. This is worse than finding out Pluto is not a planet.”

Neither Sanrio nor the LA Times have commented further on the article.