Garfield the cat, the star of Jim Davis’ internationally popular comic strip, turns 40 today.

The cantankerous ginger feline made his first appearance on 19 June 1978 when he was syndicated in 41 American newspapers, created after Davis’s Pendleton Times insect character Gnorm Gnat had been rejected by national publishers on the grounds that “nobody can relate to bugs” and he set out to devise “a good, marketable character” as a replacement.

By 1981, Garfield’s popularity was such that he appeared in 850 papers. By 2002, the total was 2,570, giving him an approximate audience of 263m readers worldwide and a Guinness World Record for the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip. Garfield also quickly became a commercial juggernaut, shifting between $750m and $1bn in merchandise annually. Davis has achieved his initial aim and then some.

The cat, who famously loves lasagne, hates Mondays and sheds fur copiously, is accompanied in the multi-panel series by his owner Jon Arbuckle - perennially trying to win a date with Liz, a sardonic vet – and fellow pets Odie the dog, Arlene and Nermal, his kitten cousin and nemesis.

Davis had grown up surrounded by cats on a farm in Marion, rural Indiana – a background that parallels Jon Arbuckle’s, also a cartoonist by profession - and where today a series of Garfield statues proudly mark his origins. Garfield was named after his creator's late grandfather.

The character represents a soothing presence in a daily paper, his downbeat mood chiming neatly with that of his readers, just out of bed, clinging to their coffee mugs and dreading the working day ahead. His curmudgeonly nature, moderate misanthropy and unapologetic gluttony are all recognisable traits that have endeared him to millions.

His simple adventures – sparring with Jon, shoving Odie off the kitchen table – build to a satisfying punchline and are likewise readily digested by the still-drowsy over the breakfast table.

Perhaps Davis’ canniest instinct was in tapping into our undying fascination with cats and their shamelessly self-centred world view, Garfield’s popularity pre-empting the YouTube cat video craze by at least two decades. What is Grumpy Cat if not a real-life Garfield?

He was quickly brought to television in the early 1980s in a series of CBS cartoon specials and then in Garfield and Friends (1988-94) and the revival The Garfield Show (2008-), voiced in the sleepy tones of Lorenzo Music and Frank Welker respectively.

He also appeared in two CGI feature films – Garfield: The Movie (2004) and its London-set sequel Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (2006) – voiced on both occasions, perfectly, by Bill Murray.

All of this has led to the character becoming one of the most recognisable in American cartoons, as famous as the Disney and Warner Brothers line-ups, Charles Schulz’s Peanuts gang or Charles Addams’ beloved ghouls. A huge inflatable Garfield is a common sight as part of the Macy’s Day Parade in New York City every Thanksgiving.