Garfield

Garfield is a comic strip created by Jim Davis. Published since June 19, 1978, it chronicles the life of the title character, the cat Garfield (named after Davis' grandfather); his owner, Jon Arbuckle; and Arbuckle's dog, Odie. As of 2007, it was syndicated in roughly 2,580newspapers and journals, and held the Guinness World Record for being the world's most widely syndicated comic strip.

Garfield is an orange, fuzzy, tabby cat born in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant and immediately ate all the pasta and lasagna of the sight, thus developing his love and obsession on lasagna. Gags in the strips commonly deal with Garfield's obesity and his hatred of exercise (or any form of work; he is known for saying breathing is exercise.) In addition to being portrayed as lazy and fat, Garfield is also pessimistic, sadistic, cynical, sarcastic, sardonic and a bit obnoxious. He enjoys destroying things, mauling the mailman, tormenting Odie, kicking Odie off the table; he also makes snide comments, usually about Jon's inability to get a date. 

Though Garfield can be very cynical, he does have a soft side for his teddy bear, Pooky, food and sleep, but one Christmas he says "they say I have to get up early, be nice to people, skip breakfast, not play with mice...I wish it would never end.It has been wondered by many readers if Garfield can actually be understood by the non animal characters around him. Sometimes it seems like Jon can hear him. However, it is mentioned in more than one strip that Jon cannot understand Garfield.

Jon (Jonathan Q. Arbuckle) is Garfield's owner, usually depicted as an awkward clumsy geek who has trouble finding a date. Jon also had a crush on Liz (Garfield's veterinarian) and is now dating her. Jon loves (or occasionally hates) Garfield and all cats. Many gags focus on this; his inability to get a date is usually attributed to his lack of social skills, his poor taste in clothes (Garfield remarked in one strip after seeing his closet that "two hundred moths committed suicide", in another, the "geek police" ordered Jon to "throw out his tie"),and his eccentric interests which range from stamp collecting to measuring the growth of his toenails to watching movies with "polka ninjas". Other strips portray him as lacking intelligence (he is seen reading a pop-up book in one strip).Jon was born on a farm that apparently contained few amenities; in one strip, his father, upon seeing indoor plumbing, remarks, "Woo-ha! Ain't science something?"Jon occasionally visits his parents, brother and grandmother at their farm. It was implied that Jon is inspired by a drawing of Davis himself when he was first drawing the strip.