For the last six months the media has been buzzing over the rumored publication of an unauthorized biography of Hello Kitty by Kitty Kelly. The rumors were confirmed yesterday when Simon & Schuster announced it would release "Cute at Any Cost: The Hello Kitty Story" in early July to take advantage of the summer vacation reading season.

However, it turns out that the author is not high-priced celeb muckraker Kelly, but rather high-priced celeb apologist-for-hire Andrew Morton, thus giving rise to further buzz as to just how "unauthorized" a biography it is.

Portions of the book have already been leaked to prominent members of the media. Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, who was sent several chapters by a messenger dressed as Ultraman, was the first to voice suspicions in her March 5 column. "Some of the conversations are obviously reconstituted," she wrote, "but it would have been impossible to do so without the participation of Her Royal Cuteness."

Among the numerous eyebrow-raising items contained in the book is how Kitty was forced by Sanrio to undergo plastic surgery in the early '90s to make her ears smaller. The anonymous Tokyo cosmetic surgeon who carried out the operation told Morton how, afterward, the white fluffball begged him to narrow the space between her eyes. "How could you resist such a face?" the doctor said tearfully. "But I had to. Sanrio didn't approve it, and they're my biggest customer."

Kitty also suffers from a variety of eating disorders common to superstars. She is kept on a strict diet of "brain food" to ensure that her head doesn't shrink, but has found ways of confounding these directives. When Sylvester the Cat was in Tokyo to celebrate the opening of the new Warner Brothers Studio Store in 1996, he was shocked at the change in his old friend. "She was coughing up hairballs faster than you could say 'Sufferin' Succotash,' " the wily feline is quoted as saying.

Morton also confirmed long-running gossip that Kitty's romance with fellow character Daniel Star was essentially cooked up by the company. The real object of her affection, it turns out, was one of Sanrio's Noraneko (alley cat) crew.

The liaison didn't bother Sanrio as much as it offended Kitty's mother, the fearsome Mary White, who told her daughter's employers in no uncertain terms that they were to nip the romance in the bud or else. One of the most shocking passages in the book has Mrs. White chewing out a Sanrio executive for allowing the affair to go on as long as it did (she refers to the unnamed paramour as "that animal shelter gigolo"). In a related item, Morton also digs up dirt on George White, who belongs to an exclusive London club that has been cited for its policy of excluding calicos.

Kitty isn't always a victim of her celebrity, though. According to the book, she has also taken advantage of it. At one point in the late '80s she pressured her superiors to get rid of the popular character Tabo because, as one Sanrio employee put it, "she found his habit of walking around with his mouth open all the time a bit disgusting." Others speculated that she felt threatened by his growing popularity.

When Sanrio ignored her demands she leaked a rumor to the press that she was in secret negotiations with Disney. Apparently, it worked. Tabo is now working at a hot spring resort in Hakone, though he told Morton that he has no hard feelings. "What do you expect?" he said with a shrug. "She's a cat."

Dowd isn't the only media critic who has weighed in on the 800-plus-page book. Sean Elder finds the whole thing a bit of a bore. In his March 15 column in Salon he wrote, "We get these tell-all biographies all the time, and I for one don't think the public is really interested in another cry-baby story from a star who's whiter than Pat Boone and doesn't even possess a mouth. And who cares if she's best friends with Liz Taylor? I mean, these days what cute comic character isn't best friends with Liz Taylor?"

Christopher Hitchens, who as far back as 1989 was railing against Hello Kitty's "hegemony of adorability," believes that the cat initiated the biography to fill the vacuum left behind with the demise of "Peanuts."

"Her popularity is already insane," he said via cell phone from a New York taxicab. "But with Snoopy gone she's got the whole cute character universe to herself. Still, the book does provide some welcome balance. It's about time we got to see the kitty litter, so to speak. That part about the Mormons had my hair standing on end."

Hollywood producers have already entered into a bidding war for the film rights. The odds-on favorite among show biz insiders is Drew Barrymore's Flower Films. The perky starlet says she'll do whatever's necessary to secure the rights.

"This is, like, a personal thing for me," she told the Hollywood Reporter yesterday. "I mean, I was born to play Kitty."