Jim Davis, the founder of Garfield, was born July 28, 1945 in Marion, Indiana. As a young adult, he read many comic strips and noticed there were a lot of successful strips about dogs, but none about cats. He combined his wry wit with the art skills he had since childhood to create Garfield; the fat, lazy, lasagna-loving, cynical cat. The strip debuted on June 19, 1978 in 41 U.S. newspapers.