Thanks to a modder, the cat in Stray now hates Mondays and loves lasagna

'Moody cat adventure game' should have been a genre for decades already, but somehow Stray's housecat protagonist feels novel, and players already want more cat options. Modders have answered that call, turning Stray's orange tabby into all kinds of alternative cats: black cats, gray cats, calico cats, lasagna cats. Yes, you can now play Stray as Garfield.

Modder Chris Rubino is responsible for putting the Jim Davis cartoon cat into Stray with the "Garfield - Cartoon Edition" mod, which can be downloaded at NexusMods.

Mod Garfield looks somewhat like the 3D animated movie version of Garfield, but it's not a perfect resemblance, and the movie version itself wasn't a great take on Garfield's classic cartoon look (two orange spheres with arms and legs). It's enough to be recognizable as Garfield, though. A different Garfield mod just puts a regular-looking striped orange cat into the game, which doesn't cut it for me.

Granted, I'm not sure why you'd want to play Stray as a convincing Garfield. He's beloved for both real and ironic reasons, but imagining that your cat protagonist has opinions about Mondays, spiders, and bathroom scales would probably deflate Stray's cyberpunk tension a bit.

I legitimately loved Garfield growing up and still do, and not even ironically. Evidence: I own and recently wore a Garfield sweater (like, a couple days ago, on a date), and Garfield follows me on Twitter, I guess because the Garfield social media manager sensed that one day I might want to mention it as a way to establish my Garfield cred. And even I don't want to play Stray as Garfield.

I'll be damned if I don't respect Rubino for doing what had to be done, though. If a Garfield mod for Stray didn't exist, it'd be reasonable to wonder if you'd slid into a parallel dimension where things are just slightly different. Say, a universe where Garfield isn't internet irony royalty and I believed that dogs are better than cats. We should all be thankful for the sign of timeline continuity.

If you like the idea of modifying Stray's cat, but not into one that hates Nermal, there are a bunch of normal cat mods for Stray on Nexus, too.