The Ramblings of a Confused Fish

Hello Kitty's Deception

Children's shows have contained animals with humanlike characteristics for a long time. It's normal, no question. Nobody considers why these foxes can speak perfect English or stand on two legs. It just is.

Anthropomorphizing animals is a confusing practice.

Everyone knows Goofy, right? Goofy is Mickey Mouse's friend, who is an anthropomorphized dog. He's my favorite character that I always thought to be a cow. However, upon my realization that Goofy was a dog, many questions arose. Mickey Mouse has a dog named Pluto. Pluto and Goofy are as different as night and day. Pluto barks, is Mickey Mouse's pet, and is on all fours. Goofy can talk, is bipedal, and can interact with others through language. Why are they treated so differently? Disney has yet to confirm why there's such a separation between them, and I will be waiting for their response.

Goofy's relationship with Clarabelle Cow further complicates everything. The fact that Goofy had a crush on Clarabelle (and likewise) insinuates that Goofy and Clarabelle are the same species and are capable of attraction toward each other. Look, if all the characters were different human-ish animals, I would accept that they are, in fact, the same species, just that they happen to look like other animals in our world. But two key characters seem to prove that our Goofy and Clarabelle are the outliers. Daisy Duck and Minnie Mouse. They date Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse (Daisy and Donald + Minnie and Mickey). They date only within their species, presumably. Mice go together and ducks go together. Then why do a dog and a cow date?

So, I did some more research. Goofy was only Clarabelle's boyfriend briefly in the late 1960s (if Wikipedia can be trusted), and Clarabelle's actual boyfriend is Horace the Horse (???). Goofy's one other love interest was introduced in A Goofy Movie. Her name is Sylvia Marpole and she's an anthropomorphized dog, just like Goofy. Are all the humanized animals the same species and are their animal of origin similar to human races? Or are they different species and Clarabelle is inter-species dating? We will never know.

Hello Kitty's is a lesser-known situation. Hello Kitty is not a cat.

Yes, Hello Kitty is not a cat. However, she owns a cat. She also has a boyfriend who is presumably also not a cat.

So, uh, what? What is Hello Kitty then?

Owned by Sanrio and created by Yuko Shimizu, Hello Kitty is confirmed to not even be Japanese, like her creator and company. Officially, Sanrio has stated that Hello Kitty is a girl named Kitty White from the London suburbs. Later, because the media started going crazy, a Sanrio PR representative came out and said that Hello Kitty is somewhere between a cat and a human, and was designed with a cat motif. And also said that calling Hello Kitty not a cat is technically wrong, since she is both human and a cat.

If something is in between a cat and a human, I will continue saying it isn't a cat. Calling something not a cat is shorter than calling something a hybrid of a human and a cat.

Does that mean there's a similar explanation for Goofy as well? He just isn't a dog either. Is he something in between?

Of course, this entire analysis was just for fun, and none of it should be taken seriously. This was entirely just to take a little dip into the strange practice of personification of animals and the background/history of these characters in particular. I don't intend to anger the corporate powerhouses that are Disney and Sanrio. At least, not yet (For legal reasons, I am joking, please don't sue me, I have no money).