We know the lazy feline loves lasagne and hates Mondays but people have just realised there’s something quite major they don’t know about Garfield.
Last week a fierce debate broke out between fans abut Garfield’s gender, forcing creator Jim Davis to intervene and clarify once and for that Garfield is a boy.
The hot topic surfaced after writer Virgil Texas came across an interview Jim had given with Mental Floss in 2014 in which he said: “By virtue of being a cat, really, he’s not really male or female or any particular race or nationality, young or old. It gives me a lot more latitude for the humour for the situations.”
Virgil tweeted the quote along with the message: “FACT: Garfield has no gender. This. Is. Canon.”
Virgil then took the dramatic action of updating Garfield’s Wikipedia page to include the new information about him being gender neutral.
And so it started… Twitter was in uproar after what they considered to be hasty edits and people took to the page to change Garfield’s gender back resulting in a 60-hour-long to and fro according to The Washington Post.
Wikipedia stepped in to shut it down, locking the edits on the page.
Some editors listed times when the cat had been called “he” or “him” or even “good boy” in the comic while opposition claimed that it didn’t matter and the gender section should be taken down.
Vigil rounded things off with this response: “If one could locate another source where Jim Davis states, as explicitly as he states in the Mental Floss article, that Garfield’s gender is male or female, then this would give rise to a serious controversy in Garfield canon.
“Yet no such source has been identified, and I highly doubt one will ever emerge.”
It seemed all this was too much for Garfield creator Jim Davis who told The Washington Post: “Garfield is male.”
The 71-year-old cartoonist expanded, pointing out that Garfield has a girlfriend, Arlene, and said that his 2014 comments had been taken out of context.
The Sun
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