There are a few things even casual fans know about Garfield. He’s a cat. He adores lasagna. He’s frequently perturbed by his dog colleague, Odie. And he DESPISES Monday. These are absolute truths that we’ve come to accept about the cartoon feline. But has anyone bothered to ask why?
Huffington Post film critic Nell Minow actually did during an interview with Garfield’s creator, Jim Davis, in honor of the DVD release of Garfield’s Holiday Collection, which will include a Thanksgiving special featuring the colorful cat and his cast of supporting characters. When approached about the cat’s feelings about Monday (a sentiment most of us share, after all), Davis told the site:
Garfield does not have a job, Garfield does not go to school, and every day is the same. Nevertheless, every Monday is just a reminder that his life is the same old, same old cycling again and for some reason even though his life is pretty much the same every day on Mondays specifically, awful things tend to happen to him physically."
Jim Davis milked it for every gag he could think of:
In time, it became a successful meme:
Jim Davis went on to explain that the earliest promotional items for Garfield had anti-Monday slogans, and that he noticed that his fan base "would let Garfield say [these things] for them. It is the attitude that people gravitate to because he is such a great escape for that."
As for the kitty cats love of all things lasagna, Jim Davis has an easier explanation, telling HuffPo:
Yeah, I love lasagne. I thought it would be funny to have a cat who likes lasagne but as it turns out, I hear from people all the time that their cats love lasagne."
Garfield had a mild resurgence when his likeness was brought to the big screen for two feature films. The cat even earned the celebrity voice of Bill Murray, who kind of confessed that he didn’t expect the movies to turn out as badly as they did.
Were they released on a Monday? Because that would make sense.
