Garfield is a series of comic strips created by Jim Davis starting in 1976. Garfield is the main character, he’s an orange cat who loves eating lasagna prepared for him by his owner, Jon Arbuckle. Garfield lives with Jon and a dog named Odie who Garfield is annoyed by. Garfield would go from a small comic strip in the paper to one of the most recognizable brands in America. The brand now has several movies out and a cartoon which I used to watch a lot of.
Garfield is meant to be comedic and, for the most part, lighthearted. Well, a few comic strips cross the line away from lighthearted comedy and to a bit sad and distressing. Jim Davis produced a brand new comic for Halloween in 1989 where Garfield wakes up in an abandoned house. Garfield searches through the empty and dark house. Near the end of the comic Garfield believes he sees food on the kitchen table and goes running for it, it ends up being a hallucination. He freaks out but ends up waking up with Jon and Odie. The comic is obviously meant to be creepy, it was Halloween but this comic still got fans theorizing.
Many fans believe that this is Garfield’s “last dying dream” but I like to think of it this way, I believe this is Garfield coming to terms with his reality right before death. The rest of the comics were him dreaming of an ideal life where he has a loving owner and a companion. He hallucinates this perfect life that he wants. Most of the comic strips revolve around Garfield and his obsession with food, this could be him dreaming of warm food in front of him to sustain him. At one point though, we all have to come to reality. I believe that Garfield was on his last dying leg and looked around the house he had been living in for so long. A house with no Jon, no Odie, and certainly no lasagna. Maybe he got so into his imaginary world, he ran around the house trying to find the two he lived with. Then when he got to the kitchen after hallucinating one last time, he finally let go and dreamed of hugging Jon one last time.
So, Jim Davis has actually heard of the fan theories surrounding this particular comic strip. He laughed and denied the Halloween comic being canon to the main comic. He wrote about Garfield being alone because that’s what most of his readers feared most, being truly alone. This theory is really sad and it sucks to think of our favorite orange cat starving but it’s an interesting and twisted thought to mull over.
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