Garfield and Friends is one of those cartoons I remember for its voice as much as its pictures. Garfield could look at Jon, say something dry that Jon never seemed to hear, and make the whole scene funnier without getting up from his chair.
As a child, I never wondered how a newspaper comic became a television show, why a farm appeared between Garfield stories, or who gave that orange cat his unmistakable voice. Looking back at the cartoon, those details make it even more interesting.
1. Garfield began in newspapers, years before the cartoon
Jim Davis’s Garfield comic strip debuted on June 19, 1978, in 41 newspapers. The cat’s habits were already strong material for short jokes: he loved food and sleep, disliked Mondays, and had plenty to say about Jon and Odie.
That simple setup worked well on the page. A look from Garfield, a thought balloon and Jon’s reaction could tell a complete story in just a few panels. Television gave the creators more time, but they still had to preserve the timing that made the strip funny.
2. Garfield was inspired by several cats
It is easy to imagine that Garfield was based on one particularly lazy orange cat. According to the comic’s syndicator, Davis instead drew on memories of the cats he knew while growing up on a farm in Indiana. Garfield was a combination of their traits rather than a portrait of one pet.
His name came from a person in the family: Davis’s grandfather, James Garfield Davis. Once you know that, a name you have heard thousands of times has a little family history behind it.
3. He appeared on television before Garfield and Friends
For many viewers, Garfield and Friends feels like the beginning of Garfield on screen. It was not. Writer and voice director Mark Evanier recalls that Garfield appeared in a short segment of the 1980 CBS special The Fantastic Funnies, where Scott Beach provided his voice.
The prime-time special Here Comes Garfield followed in 1982. Lorenzo Music voiced Garfield in that special and became the voice closely associated with the character. By the time Garfield and Friends arrived in 1988, Garfield had already spent years moving from the comics page to animation.
4. Why was it called Garfield and Friends?
The “friends” in Garfield and Friends did not refer only to Jon and Odie. The programme also included stories about Orson the pig and the other animals from U.S. Acres, another comic strip created by Jim Davis.
Those farm stories gave the show a second world. One moment we were watching Garfield find a way to avoid effort; the next, we were following Orson and his friends through a completely different kind of adventure. In some countries, the farm segments appeared under the name Orson’s Farm. Evanier explains that the alternative title was used because the joke in “U.S. Acres” did not work in every language.
5. Lorenzo Music voiced Garfield, not Jon
It is hard for me to separate Garfield from Lorenzo Music’s relaxed, dry delivery. Even an ordinary remark could sound funny when Garfield said it. But Music was Garfield’s voice, not Jon’s.
According to Evanier, Sandy Kenyon voiced Jon in the first prime-time special. Thom Huge took over the role in the next special and also voiced Jon in Garfield and Friends. Gregg Berger supplied Odie’s familiar dog sounds and voiced Orson in the farm segments.
It is a good reminder of how much the performers contributed. We remember the drawings, but a voice or a small sound can bring back a character just as quickly.
6. Was Garfield talking, or were we hearing his thoughts?
In the newspaper strip, Garfield’s words appear in thought balloons. Jon cannot hear his sarcastic comments. Animation made that arrangement more complicated: viewers needed to hear Garfield, while the people around him generally could not.
Evanier has described how the team sometimes kept Garfield’s mouth still to suggest that we were hearing his thoughts. Other scenes, particularly those with animal characters, were harder to handle consistently. If you notice Garfield’s mouth moving in one scene but not another, there is a production reason behind it. The cartoon did not always follow one fixed rule.
As children, most of us simply accepted it. Garfield spoke to us, Jon missed the joke, and the story carried on.
7. The later Garfield Show was a different production
It is easy to group every animated Garfield series together, especially when the same characters return. But the computer-animated The Garfield Show was a separate production made years after the hand-drawn Garfield and Friends.
Its look changed, and so did the structure of the programme: Orson and the U.S. Acres cast were no longer part of it. Evanier, who worked on both shows, has explained that they were produced by different companies under different arrangements. Remembering which series we watched helps make sense of why two Garfield cartoons can feel so different.
Why we still remember Garfield and Friends
Knowing these facts does not change the pleasure of an old Garfield episode. The best moments are still small ones: Jon trying to keep control of the house, Odie doing something completely innocent, and Garfield finding exactly the wrong thing to say at exactly the right time.
For many of us, the memory also includes the television we watched it on. If you remember waiting for a cartoon to come on, our story about watching cartoons on a CRT TV may feel familiar. And if another cat-and-mouse pair was part of your childhood, you can read our Tom and Jerry facts as well.
Which part of Garfield and Friends do you remember most clearly: Garfield’s remarks, Odie and Jon, or the unexpected trips to Orson’s farm?