For how it all started read Part I: Found and Lost

For years after moving to the US owning a cat was out of question for various reasons. But it was always somewhere in plans for future because both my vSO and I loved cats and wanted to have one. So for a while we had to figure out how to deal with that.

I don’t remember exactly how it happened but I think one morning my vSO found him at our door. And from this first comic strip (see below) through years of newspaper subscriptions, dozens of comic books and even membership in the Garfield Club (it doesn’t exist any longer) this fat well-fed, lazy, mischievous, sarcastic but still charming orange cat moved with us from one apartment to another.

Garfield became our virtual cat. We would use phrases from Garfield stories in appropriate situations.

Diet is ‘die’ with ‘t’.

Give me coffee and nobody will get hurt.

I’m not overweight—I’m undertall.

We had favorite comic strips that we would repeat to each other the way people relive real life memories.

How did you sleep?

I just had a thought…

Crumbs!

So even though we didn’t have a cat we had plenty of grins.

Images: All from garfield.com.