Unit 19
　　Jim Davis, Creator of Garfield
　　Jim Davis, is an American cartoonist who created the popular comic strip Garfield in 1978. As an Art and Business major at Ball State University, Davis distinguished himself by earning one of the lowest accumulative grade point averages in the history of the school. Prior to creating Garfield, Davis worked for a local advertising agency. Garfield is now one of the most popular cartoon characters in the world. The Garfield character is a selfish, overweight, orange and black cat with drooping eyelids.
　　Davis was born on July 28, 1945, in Indiana, where he grew up on a small farm with his parents and brother Dave. His love of cartooning emerged during the time he would normally be doing chores, but couldn't due to asthma. Davis' inspiration for Garfield probably came from his childhood on the farm, where he was surrounded by some 25 cats. The Garfield character is named after Davis' grandfather, James A. Garfield Davis, a big short-tempered man. Garfield is a tribute to the lazy person in all of us. His idea of a daily routine is sleeping, eating and occasionally biting a mail man or two just for the fun of it. Everyone can relate to Garfield in some way because most of the humor is about eating or sleeping, something we all do. Garfield is owned by a young man named Jon Arbuckle who also owned a happy, slobbering little dog named Odie, whom Garfield is always taunting. Davis' childhood on a farm parallels the life of Garfield's owner, Jon Arbuckle, who was also raised on a farm with his parents and brother Doc Boy. Jon, too, is a cartoonist.
　　Garfield, now syndicated in over 2,500 newspapers, has been the subject of such prime time animated TV specials as Here Comes Garfield, Garfield in the Rough, Garfield in Paradise, The Garfield Halloween Adventure, and A Garfield Thanksgiving as well as his own Saturday morning program Garfield And Friends /CBS/1988~1995 and the theatrical cartoon Garfield: The Movie(2004).
　　Davis now lives in Muncie, Indiana where he and his staff continue to produce Garfield under his own company, Paws, Inc. which started in 1981. He is married to Carolyn, a singer and teacher whom he met while both were attending college, and has a son named James.
　　Oddly, Davis did not have cats when he started Garfield and still does not today, as his wife is allergic to them. He does, however, have a dog named Molly.