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Every once in awhile you learn something that rocks your world, such as: there is no privacy on the Internet; Pluto is not a planet; chocolate is not at the top of the food pyramid.

Now another cold shock is reverberating throughout the universe: Hello Kitty is not a cat. Oh, my. For 40 years, billions of Hello Kitty fans, including moi, have cherished her, spent money on her, have loved her, and now it all feels like one long sucker punch of a bad date - deceived again! If Hello Kitty is not a cat, then there's no such thing as gravity; pigs do fly; and Ted Cruz will become President.

Sanrio, the Japanese company that owns the $9 billion Hello Kitty empire, inadvertently launched this kerfuffle when it corrected the text for the upcoming Hello Kitty exhibit in Los Angeles written by anthropologist Christine Yano.

Dr. Yano stumbled into the kitty litter big time when she described Hello Kitty as a (gasp!) cat. Even though Dr. Yano has spent 10 years researching and writing her definitive text, Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty's Trek Across the Pacific, and ought to know whether or not HK is a cat, Sanrio was quick to differ.

Here's what Dr. Yano had to say in the Los Angeles Times (August 27, 2014): " . . . 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."

Oh, snap!

Sanrio continued the conversation by saying, "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."

Wasn't it bad enough when, as a cat, Hello Kitty had no mouth? Now they have go and tell us that all this time she was really a little girl? But still - no mouth. Doesn't that give you the shivers? Why would they want a little girl with no mouth? Could it be because she might say things they don't like? Because she might declare her contempt for Mr. Sanrio by screaming: "What's up with the whiskers, dude?"

Seriously, this tells me they're pretty messed up at Sanrio. What kind of psycho-social derangement is going on here? I doubt there are enough psychiatrists in all of Japan to unravel this riddle. Our DSM-V (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fifth edition), the Bible for all psychotherapists in the U.S.A., would probably assign a diagnosis of "gender identity disorder," "delusional disorder," or "body dysmorphic disorder" to the folks at Sanrio who deny HK is a cat.

I have a suggestion. Why not label it for what it really is: "Just Plain Stupid Disorder."

Maybe it's time to pack our Hello Kitty bags and leap from the Sanrio crazy train.

- Rosie Sorenson

Rosie Sorenson is the award-winning author of They Had Me at Meow: Tails of Love from the Homeless Cats of Buster Hollow. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and others. In 2007, she won an honorable mention in the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition.