Movable Feast, Hold the Sauce

Now that Garfield has wadded up the spaghetti and put it in his armpit, Jon is not interested in eating it. On first scan, the gag is that the cat has swiped his master's dinner yet again. Garfield's inventive ruse, disguising the pasta as a ball of yarn, takes advantage of both the feline propensity for yarn-assisted frolics and the strip's art style which does not allow the eye to readily distinguish between food and fabric.

And that joke is there. Garfield steals this food although Jon's phrasing probably implies that Garfield was going to get a portion of spaghetti anyway. If his motivation were just to eat unseasoned, plain spaghetti, Garfield could have completed his mission alone in the kitchen. If he feared Jon's return to the kitchen, Garfield could have concealed the food as he spirited it away to a safe location. Garfield goes through unnecessary labor and trickery to dupe Jon for a matter of seconds.

Because ultimately this is not about Garfield's appetite for food. Garfield wants Jon to know that dinner is ruined. He wants Jon to know that he could have stopped it. He wants that middle panel, that moment where Jon realizes what is happening, what it means, that the man is a fool and the cat is triumphant, malicious, and a complete prick. And that, ladies and Nermals, is another sort of appetite.

And: I don't want to turn into one of those guys, but the missing hyphen in Jon's first word balloon makes my palms itch. As long as I'm being one of those guys anyway, that looks more like a fettuccine or tagliatelle.

The Jon-queror Worm

Jon consciously attempts to blind himself to any negative associations about time spent with Liz, only to crash back to reality. The intoxicating powers of romance can effect even those characters inhabiting a world as thick with ennui as Garfield, but the small happiness of time spent with a woman he likes is not enough for Jon. He has to build a scaffolding of self-delusion (look at that lost expression), and fight off even the tiniest unpleasantness. That the date activity was kind of poorly chosen is not a big deal, it's not a character flaw in Liz, and Jon's discomfort could've been avoided by better communication; part of this story is about a thin facade of perfection Jon puts up around Liz. Alternate reading: Jon's horror at the lecture was largely because being reminded of the vulnerability of household pets to tapeworms, i.e. the evening spent with Liz clarified the potential for repulsiveness deep inside his best friend.

The other part is about how Jon and Liz had a good time even though Jon was variously bored and disgusted during the medical lecture. Because while a lot of Garfield is about pointing out how empty and unhappy-making our culture is (Jon's 27 year string of failed dates, Garfield's TV-watching habits), a lot of it is about rooting out the small joys we root out of unexpected crevices. Maybe it's self-delusion in panels one and two... maybe Jon got a weird charge out of getting sick looking at pictures of gastrointestinal systems with his girlfriend. And if the Garfield audience laughed, then maybe we all did.

Q: What does Garfield's rejoinder mean? Is he sarcastically pointing out that since Jon is sick to his stomach he obviously wouldn't want to eat? Or is he implying Jon vomited, and may actually be hungry again? Why do I care about this tiny variable, when the overall meaning of the joke is the same?

Either way, it looks like Garfield is trying to sleep while Jon keeps him awake, babbling about his new girlfriend. The only part that catches his attention is about spaghetti. Who has their priorities in order?