Garfield
Who is the world’s most-known cartoon cat, besides Tom (from Tom and Jerry)? That’s, probably, Garfield! We are now collecting online free games featuring this character on our gaming server and that’s why we’ve created a separate page for this cat — to give our readers a nice and full description of who he is and why he is popular.Description of appearance and traits of this character
Garfield is an orange-color domestic cat of the Persian breed. He is often mentioned in official descriptions as a ‘Tabby cat’, which is the same as a domestic cat actually — just for you to not be confused.
He is sized somewhat bigger than a usual cat compared to human size and is different from cats in nature because he is more inclined to be anthropomorphic than having a purely animal appearance (although, in his early depictions, he was more like a cat before he was redesigned later). Correspondingly, he has legs and arms instead of paws and can walk on his legs and operate with his arms as humans do. This makes it possible for him to better reach various objects and planes, basically, to sneak food from elevated surfaces.
According to his fictional history, he was born in an Italian restaurant in the US. Since this place primarily served lasagna, pasta, and pizza to its customers, he began to love these types of foods (because he filched these off the counter in the kitchen whenever it was possible, when food was in his sight and proximity). Because he ate too much, at one point, this circumstance made the restaurant’s owner ponder: whether to become broke or to give Garfield away for the sake of rescuing the business. The latter was chosen and this character was given to a pet shelter, from which he was later adopted by his owner Jon.
The main personality traits of this character are:
• laziness
• fattiness
• cynicism
• sarcasm
• avoiding any type of physical exercises and work
• hatred of Mondays, spiders, raisins, spinach, and his fellow cat Nermal
• treating bad to most others around, including people and pets (with minor exceptions)
• love of any food, not just lasagna, pasta, or pizza (except for the named raisins & spinach), which would also include such normally inedible items as room plants and small pets (fish and birds inclusively).
His basic three colors are:
• orange (this color covers his entire body from the bottom to the top)
• black (the inserts of this color are only met on the strips to show he is a striped cat and occasionally on his head, as well as ears)
• yellow (depending on the case of depicting this cat in the media or on TV, the paleness of yellow differs and can be even nearly white, especially in his animated versions and films) — to color the area above his mouth.
This set of colors does not include his eyes, which are shown also differently: from simply black-and-white to real-like eyes for cats in nature (the latter is especially true for films).
A significant feature of this creature is that he does not have whiskers. This makes him look more human-like and chubbier, which also adds to the comedy effect of the character.
Garfield by all means denies that he is fat (or whatever he is called by others), coming up with different excuses or refutations for this. For instance, he is known to have said that he is not fat, he is under-tall. Or that he refuses physical exercises because breathing is already an exercise for him. Along with that, he loves to eat (certainly), so he eats nearly everywhere: at home, restaurants, eateries, street, during visits to other people and places, and generally, whenever and wherever possible. He especially adores visiting his owner’s family farm, where he grew up because Jon’s mother cooks a hellishly large amount of food each time they get there.
Garfield is shown in comic strips, books, and TV shows as the center and creator of various gags, jokes, puns, funny & odd situations, where he or his surrounding characters get into. The overwhelming part of the adventures of this cat is understandable to everyday viewers and includes locations, which are common for people in the US: house, apartment, farm, diner, street, vet office, car, etc.
There are a handful of other characters, with whom he interacts during his adventures and misbehaviors:
• Jon, his owner
• Liz, a vet of Garfield, a love interest of Jon, and a person, with whom he mostly dates in the latest issues of the comic strip (although she initially hated Jon when they met)
• Odie, a pet dog, who lives with Garfield in the house of his owner
• Pooky, a toy bear of the main protagonist and his best friend (although not alive)
• Nermal, another cat living in the house, whom the main protagonist hates and tries to get rid of periodically
• Arlene, a female cat of pink color with lipstick and eyelashes, who is a love interest of the character considered here.
Above, we told you about the main characters of the comic strip but there are also other characters. Thus, there is Jon’s family, which they periodically visit (and who occasionally make visits to them). There are also recurring or minor characters, like Lyman, Irma, Reba, Hubert, Squeak, or Bill the Cat. And, finally, there is Garfield’s family: a mother and a grandfather. The involvement of the two latter in the show is insignificant and has not been clearly clarified in terms of their history. It feels like the cat’s family is only introduced to give the viewers a feeling that the protagonist is not absolutely lonely in this world (which would otherwise break people’s hearts).
Although in nearly every instance of the comic strip, TV show, or film, it is specifically and clearly understood that the cat protagonist is a male, there have been talks about his gender. The creator of Garfield has said once that he did not create this character to be of specific gender, race, nationality, breed, or age because he did not want to limit him and also because the very idea of this funny cat was to make him detached from any particular gender idea, political idea, or religious frames. This would make him universally understandable to all people in the world. However, this cat is specifically inclined to identify himself as a male and has mostly male traits in his character and behavior. Also, his male gender is proven by the fact that he has an illegitimate son Bill the Cat (which was revealed to the public in 2015), which was born not by him. So, even though there might be different opinions on this matter, the main protagonist of this text is actually a male.
When Garfield originated: the history
This character appeared first in the year 1976, in a comic strip in the USA. The strip was initially called Jon, named after the main human protagonist of the comics but two years later, it was renamed to Garfield — and it was a successful commercial decision because the name Garfield can be more uniquely identified than Jon.
Garfield was the name of the father of the creator in the real life, and most characteristic traits of this cat were taken from the father, who was an astringent, demanding, and chuff man of a large physique.
Jim Davis, the cartoonist and comic strip creator, who invented Garfield, grew up on a farm in Indiana, the US, which was also a home for 25 cats (some of which were also orange-colored and their biggest part, if not all, were plain domestic cats of no particular breed). Thus, when in his late twenties, he was thinking of creating a new character, which would have commercial potential, and took the idea of a cat based on his previous life experience. He did think of other characters, too, for instance, dogs, but at the time of creating this cat, the market of comics was oversaturated with dog characters. Before doing Garfield, he did have other pieces of oeuvre, also comic strips — particularly, he was making Gnorm Gnat (but it was not very successful among the audiences because not too many people could relate to a gruesome fly). The name Jon was the name of one of Jim’s friends.
The creation of this cat protagonist was a large commercial success. Since he was not a character in comic books (which were always focusing on human-like superheroes, not pets), the origin of this character was on the pages of newspapers. From only one newspaper, over time, this cat started to appear in around 2,600 newspapers around the world. As of the time of writing this text, Garfield is known in over 110 countries in the world, with over 250 million weekly readers.
When the creator of this cat was designing it, he decided not to give this character any controversial or sensitive traits to free him from politics, religion, gender, age, social position, or anything other, which could make him a non-desirable persona in any average home of viewers around the globe. That’s thanks to this character’s universal nature he is perceived well by all social groups of all ages around the world. Otherwise, he would not be around with us for nearly 50 years as of the time being (he is celebrating his 50th anniversary in 2026).
Games, merch, and media empire built around the character
When this cat started to gain tremendous popularity, Jim Davis created the world’s famous Paws, Inc. Company in 1981, which focused solely on the promotion of the protagonist, the merch, and the media around it. It was a privately held company until 2019 when it was sold to Viacom, which is now Paramount Global. Everything we know about Garfield today was created under the reign of Paws, Inc.: TV shows and specials, edits of books about this cat, various websites, TV series, and TV films. There exist 6 films — three of them are full-scale, made for cinemas (in 2004, 2006, and a planned one in 2024). The other three of them are direct-to-video products, which were released in 2007, 2008, and 2009.
The films starred Bill Murray (as the voice of the cat), Breckin Meyer, and Jennifer Love Hewitt. In the 2024 installment, the cat will be voiced by Chris Pratt and other main roles will be played by people, different from the original cast. There will also be Samuel L. Jackson as a voice of Garfield’s father Vic. The first two films collected 200 and 140 million dollars against budgets of both equal to 110 million dollars in total, which is kinda good (not exceptional, though). Three direct-to-video films were 70+ minutes each and were released on a DVD.
The global empire of merchandise about this character includes:
• various books and their compilations (in the format easy to read from left to right, unlike top-to-bottom versions represented in newspapers; this format with time became popular for other cartoon heroes’ comic books). There are over 100 such books about this cat so far and their number steadily grows
• films that we have described above
• black-and-white strips (12 as of the time being)
• color strips (24)
• ‘treasury’ collections
• novels
• home videos on VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray
• TV regular and specials
• animated series
• video games (over 30 only official ones)
• commercials and promos
• figurines
• toys
• apparel, hats, and footwear
• pieces of everyday usage, like mugs, etc.
• statues, including ones that are installed on streets of cities
• product packaging
• venue branding (including restaurants and diners), and others.
Various websites, official and fan-run, are aimed at not only representing this character in his natural behavior or telling about him but also giving other patterns and options. Thus, Garfield in comic strips is known to communicate to characters and his master via words, which appear in the picture as ovals with the text in them. Some websites make it possible to delete these ovals with text, completely eliminating the word context of scenes, sometimes, making readers feel like Jon, the cat’s owner, talks to himself (which makes the cat a non-real but imaginary creature, highlighting a high degree of loneliness of Jon). This gives another — yet valuable — insight into Jon’s mind, denoting how actually this person is lonely due to the fact that he has to talk to a cat instead of real people (although he dates Liz).
The merch-and-media empire around this character is so big that it is estimated that every year, around 0.7-1 billion dollars are made on sales (with an undisclosed volume of profit for the right holders, which, as we believe, are hundreds of millions of dollars yearly before taxes). That’s why this character still keeps spreading to new markets. And his creator, Jim Davis, is a holder of numerous awards and prizes for his contribution to the development of the economy, show business, and arts.
Video games with this character
Video games are a huge part of Garfield’s universe. They were done for various platforms, beginning with 1984 Atari, then Apple, PCs, smartphone operating systems, Game Boy, Sega, PS, Nintendo, Wii, Xbox, and their various modifications.
The kinds of those games include those, where you have to do usual mundane activities with this cat (surely, copying his mischievous behavior), creative pieces, finding objects, passing labyrinths, typing, searching for hidden objects, saving other characters, eating various kinds of food, riding, racing, and doing other things. On our website packed with all sorts of free games, players of all ages and from all countries in the world, where our website operates, will also find such instances as color-ups, puzzles (jigsaws), and other trivia.