Davis answered more questions about Garfield in the interview. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

What was the initial inspiration for Garfield?

I had worked for nine years with Tom Ryan on the Tumbleweeds strip. I was trying to come up with something unique. I tried a bug strip, Gnorm Gnat. After two years of receiving rejection slips, an editor said, You know, nobody can relate to bugs . I took a long, hard look at the comics. And I saw dogs doing really well — Snoopy, Marmaduke — but no cats. I had never seen Heathcliff. I thought I had the first cat idea.

Was there ever a rivalry between Garfield and Heathcliff, who debuted in 1973?

No, we were so different. There’s no rivalry between cartoonists anyway. As for the characters, they are very different and the humor comes from different places. Heathcliff is very broad. He’s more vaudevillian. I dialed up the reality factor for Garfield. He operates in a cat’s body in a cat’s world and physically has those limitations.

When did you start using assistants on the strip?

The first year I did it all myself. Then things got crazy with the licensing . By virtue of the limits of the number of hours in a day, I started relying more on assistants for the artwork because there are a lot of great artists out there. I would say there are four of us that could draw Garfield and you couldn’t tell the difference. But because I do all the writing, Garfield has one voice .

Was there a pivotal moment when you knew the strip was a hit?

I started in 41 newspapers and the big one was The Chicago Sun-Times . The strip started in June and in August, they notified the syndicate that they were dropping the feature for budgetary reasons. Within a week, they had 1,300 replies, phone calls and letters, to put Garfield back in. At that moment I thought: “Wow. Garfield has some staying power.”