No transcript available
Has it ever been confirmed that Garfield, Jon, and Odie can speak directly to each other? Or is it that Jon can interpret the actions of his pets?
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
16 points (100.0% liked)
Garfield
1361 readers
26 users here now
Hello fellow Garfield fans!
About this community and how I post the comic strip… The comics are posted in chronological order on the day (usually) they were released. Posting them to match the release date adds a bit of fun and nostalgia to match the experience of reading them in the newspaper for first time. Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips. It really sucked when I missed a day. Only years later, when I got the books was I able to catch up on the missed strips.
Garfield is an American comic strip created by Jim Davis. Originally published locally as Jon in 1976, then in nationwide syndication from 1978 as Garfield, it chronicles the life of the title character Garfield the cat, his human owner Jon Arbuckle, and Odie the dog. As of 2013, it was syndicated in roughly 2,580 newspapers and journals and held the Guinness World Record for being the world's most widely syndicated comic strip... Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield
Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s Bloom County!
Ps. Sub to all my comic strip communities:
Bello Bear !BelloBear@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/bellobearofficial
Bloom County !bloomcounty@lemm.ee https://lemm.ee/c/bloomcounty
Calvin and Hobbes !calvinandhobbes@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/calvinandhobbes
Cyanide and Happiness !cyanideandhappiness https://lemm.ee/c/cyanideandhappiness
Garfield !garfield@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/garfield
The Far Side !thefarside@sh.itjust.works https://lemmy.world/c/thefarside@sh.itjust.works
Fine print: All comics I post are freely available online. In no way am I claiming ownership, copyright or anything else. This is a not for profit community, we just want to enjoy our comics, thank you.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
The canonical answer is that Jon is reacting to Garfield and Odie's actions, not their thoughts: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/222029
Jim: I wanted to ride that real fine line between wanting to understand what the cat says, I think people honestly feel that cats think in English, that cats understand everything as they do but obviously they don't talk so I wanted to ride that line between here's what your cat is really thinking to give pet owners insight into what their pets are really thinking without giving it away, to have him really talk and Jon understand him, would have made it more of a fantasy. I always wanted to create a strip that could have cats, if they had opposable thumbs, would drink coffee if they could. Apparently Heathcliff, a cat in a comic strip panel, would fly planes and drive cars and be on a desert island and I didn't want to do that. I wanted to create a very real world and then go out to the fantasy from there. And, you'll notice that when Jon understands what Garfield is saying, it's something Garfield does with an action, not a word that communicates it.
Found someone that removed the thought bubbles from a few comics as an example:
https://bogleech.tumblr.com/post/76445444351/i-know-garfield-minus-garfield-was-the-one-that
On the other hand, there's strips like this one that seem to have Jon hearing Garfield's thoughts, though that can be chalked up to Jon making up dialogue for his pets to amuse himself:
https://garfield.fandom.com/wiki/Garfield,_January_1992_comic_strips?file=1992-01-21.gif
Here's another one:
https://garfield.fandom.com/wiki/Garfield,_May_1986_comic_strips?file=1986-05-20.gif
Every so often we get reminded that Garfield loves his human 🧡
…can opener.