Garfield by Jim Davis for November 14, 1978

I love Garfield, and I am just letting you know that the following is not a complaint, it’s a curiosity I’ve always had about my favorite comic cat. My biggest question that I’ve always had about Garfield was: the original story of Garfield’s background was always said to be that he was born in an Italian kitchen, but at the beginning of Garfield’s first book (Garfield at large), he was already not just a grown cat, but he was bigger and fatter than he was for most of his future duration. You can obviously argue that the start of the first book was obviously not when he was born, but in every anniversary date after the date of the first strip at the start of book one, it’s stated as Garfield’s birthday, not the Garfield strip’s birthday. Like on June 19, 1979 in book two, Garfield himself in the strip turns one, than 6/19/80, he turns two, etc. Why wasn’t their any Garfield strip showing his real birth and kittenhood and being a kitten, turning a few weeks old, than a month old, and so on? Why wasn’t their any strips of his talked about early days in the Italian restaurant? Instead, he’s seemingly a grown-up cat at one day old bigger and more obese than for the remainder of his strip. He’s basically the first feline in history to be born bigger and to then grow smaller until he reached his permanent size at around two years old (around book three), and instead of his initial little eyes and enormous body he had at the beginning, he had much bigger eyes, a much smaller body, and his head about the same size as his body. His appearance changed dramatically in the first 2-3 years, and since the first Garfield books I ever read were books 3, 5, 6, and after, I bought his first book expecting to see little kitten Garfield in the first half, but was shocked to see this very different looking much bigger and fatter cat. I was a huge Garfield fan, and still am all these years later. That’s why this has always intrigued me