F**k Garfield's Gigantic Feet!

I saw something today and I have to say something about it. Because if you see something terrible and you don't say something about, if you're a passive bystander and you don't speak up or intervene, then that suggests that you condone the behaviour. I saw a picture of Garfield today and it really upset me.

If you had to describe Garfield in one word you'd probably say "unfunny". But if you were goaded into caring enough to produce a second word, then you'd probably say "fat". He's a fat cat, right? I have a fat cat. I can relate to that. That's why he's so (inexplicably) popular. But look at this image of Garfield from 2012:

WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON WITH HIS GIGANTIC, MALFORMED, STUPID FEET?!

Join me after the jump because by god I feel a rant coming on...

I can get past the tiredness of it all. The smug attitude. The toothless slogans. But I can't get past those giant feet. They are like battleships. Look at them on the cover of this comic that only a very unique audience could possible want...

But the weirdest thing here is that the massive feet undermine the basic Garfield premise. He is no longer fat! Sure, he might be frequently pictured with food (refer to that pizza picture above) but his body/stomach are now nearly smaller than his head, and his combined head and body take up about the same amount of space as a single foot. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!? You guys have all seen actual cats, right? They don't look like this:

 Why would his back paws be so much more grossly enlarged than his front paws. And why does he now have hands instead of front paws? And what's with his eyes?

Okay, True Confessions time. I may an embittered, cynical adult now (I learned it from you, Garfield!) but as a child of the eighties I goddamn loved the shit out of Garfield. I thought it was hilarious, and I owned a ton of the books and a ton of the dolls. I even had a sweatshirt that said Garfield 84. So Jim Davis has plenty of my money, so this isn't a criticism of him by any means. I respect that he loves lots of money.

But the Garfield that I grew up with was a fat cat that actually had paws. This is what Garfield looked like in his first appearance:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's brilliant, right? "Feed me," he says! What a crack up. And he's not even doing that smug half-closed lids attitudin' smile that he always does now. No, he's frowning. Like a real fat person. And I love it.

But would that fat, unhappy Garfield have been the bazillion dollar merchandising machine that he eventually became? No. Probably not. Because fat unhappy people don't want to read about fat unhappy cats. So then we get classic, cute, cuddly Garfield, which is the one that I'm most familiar with...

Now what's wrong with that? Nothing! This Garfield I can accept. He's not as hideous as the original fat, unhappy, giant cube Garfield, but he's still - at his core - a fat cat. He's still kind of cat shaped. This is a Garfield I can get behind. This is the Garfield that I wore proudly on my 1984 sweatshirt. This is a Garfield that has paws instead of colossal, deformed, tank-like feet.

A lot of people on the Internet get worked up about all sorts of stupid, trivial bullshit like alien Ninja Turtles or the ending of Mass Effect 3. They rant and whine and they start petitions. Well, I'm here to tell you that Garfield's feet are a far more important issue than any of that other idiot stuff. We need to do something about it and you need to speak up and have your voice heard. You need to be counted. You need to send a strong message that giant hind paws on a cat are completely unacceptable. 

Rise up, my brothers! I am personally going to boycott lasagne on Mondays until this crisis is solved.

(And why does Garfield hate Mondays anyway? I'm the one that should hate Mondays. Because unlike Garfield, I have a fucking job).