Got an email this week from a blog reader named Krystal, she asked:
Do you have a story about Garfield, I grew up watching that show :)
I didn’t have a story about Garfield posted but since I knew of a good one I decided to write one up today. So here’s a story about a part of Garfield’s life that you might not have known about…
THE STORY BEHIND POOKY BEAR
Garfield is well known for being a very lovable but grumpy cat, on most days he doesn’t seem like much of anything other than lasagna and sleeping. There is usually only one exception to this, and that’s Pooky his stuffed teddy bear.
While Garfield overflows with jokes and sarcastic remarks for most everyone, with Pooky he has no problem being affectionate and confiding his innermost thoughts. But how did this happen?
The story behind Pooky the bear is that he originally didn’t belong to Garfield at all. He used to belong to Garfield’s owner Jon Arbuckle back when Jon was a kid and lived on a farm in rural Indiana.
Jon grew up with Pooky and then started to forget about him, and eventually Pooky ended up tossed into a dresser drawer and forgotten.
That is, until one day Garfield was lazily rummaging through the bottom drawer of a dresser and he came a cross a little brown teddy bear with button eyes…
A COUPLE OF SECONDS
Garfield’s first instinct was to react with sarcasm like he often does. He held the bear out at arm’s length and frowned at his find:
A teddy bear. A dumb, stupid, silly-looking old teddy bear.
But it only took a couple of seconds for Pooky to win Garfield over and soon he was smiling and hugging the bear, not to mention thinking up a cute name:
I think I’ll call him… Pooky.
Awww X).
This was a bit of a turning point in Garfield’s life because by having this teddy bear he started to be able to express a less grumpy and sarcastic side of himself.
Whenever he’s having a bad day he can talk to Pooky about it and feel better. And despite not being a super affectionate type in general he can often be seen happily hugging Pooky.
BETTER THAN PILES OF PRESENTS
I have to say thought that the greatest proof of Garfield’s love for his teddy bear happened one Christmas when one of Pooky’s button eyes fell off and was lost forever.
If you follow the Garfield comic strip or cartoons you probably know that he’s super obsessed with getting piles of presents on Christmas, and doesn’t always *ahem* get into the Christmas spirit of giving.
But when Pooky lost the button eye all Garfield wanted for Christmas was… a single button for Pooky.
So cute! And wherever you see Garfield with his teddy bear you can pretty much count on it being cute. I think that’s why Pooky seems to be one of the most popular Garfield characters shown on various Garfield related stuff out there. I mean who doesn’t love Garfield snuggling with his teddy bear?
And it all started because Garfield was bored and felt like rummaging through the bottom dresser drawer one day.
So there you go, that’s the story behind Garfield and Pooky the teddy bear, what do you think? As for me, this is making me wish I still had all those Garfield comic books from when I was a kid, I loved those and had tons!