She
struts the catwalk at New York fashion shows and she's best friends with
Mariah Carey and Cameron Diaz.

She makes 0 million a year, but prefers relaxing at home with friends
and baking cakes in her spare time. Hello Kitty, one of Japan's most
famous character brands, may be heading for her 30th birthday, but the
silky feline is showing no signs of her age.

The cute white cat with the pink bow on her ear accounts for half of
Sanrio's annual revenues of billion, and is emblazoned on over 20,000
goods - everything from toasters and handbags to adult toys - in some 40
countries. Hello Kitty even has her own theme park.

But while Kitty's international profile is bigger than ever, Sanrio
is battling to fight off the effects of brand fatigue and a shrinking
market in Japan, where the company still gets over 80 per cent of its
sales.

"From cutlery and coffee cups to the toilet seat cover, almost
everything in my one-room apartment was Hello Kitty, even the
curtains," says Tomoko Taniai, a 25-year old Tokyoite and ex-Kitty
lover. "But after a while, on TV and in magazines it was just
Kitty, Kitty, Kitty. I couldn't keep up anymore."

So how did a mouthless cat with no story line become an international
brand sensation?

"I just like her because she is like the Mona Lisa, you never
know if she is smiling or if she is sad," says a fan on Kitty
Realm, an Internet message board where Hello Kitty aficionados meet to
purr about her lovable quirks. Unlike other popular characters such as
Mickey Mouse or Winnie the Pooh, whose images remain strictly controlled
by their owners, Kitty's designers have been given largely free rein by
Sanrio.

She can be seen playing the piano, riding a Harley Davidson, and
wearing anything from a Hawaiian Hula skirt to a traditional Korean
wedding dress. Some say this adaptability is the key to her universal
appeal.

"There's no 'Hello Kitty - The Movie,' there's just the brand
image, and in a sense Hello Kitty is the purest brand image on the
market. She just is," says a New York Times reporter.

With high-profile friends including singers Mariah Carey and Lisa
Loeb, Hello Kitty is also attracting a whole new set of adult fans. Loeb,
35, who tells fans on her website that her growing Kitty collection
includes leg warmers and a waffle maker, titled her last album
"Hello Lisa" and plastered the cute cat on the cover.