People are fighting over the gender of Garfield... A cartoon cat

That Garfield is a hot air balloon. That much we can agree on.

People are arguing over whether the cartoon cat Garfield is a girl cat or a boy cat or an undefinable cat.

Garfield’s creator, Jim Davis, was interviewed by Mental Floss two years ago.

In the interview, he said:

Garfield is very universal. By virtue of being a cat, really, he’s not really male or female or any particular race or nationality, young or old.

Satirist and part-time troll Virgil Texas got hold of this quote and took it to Wikipedia.

Since then, a war quickly ravaged on the Garfield page.

Garfield swapped genders on the site 20 times in two-and-a-half days. Also, his religion was briefly cited as Shiite Muslim.

People were angry.

An administrator stepped in, and declared Garfield is male, citing a handful of comic strips as evidence.

The page was locked against edits until March.

In an effort to resolve the situation, the Washington Post contacted Jim Davis, who said:

Garfield is male. He has a girlfriend, Arlene.

We can't wait till people start citing Roland Barthes' The Death of the Author in their argument, concerning the gender of a cartoon cat on a free community-curated internet encyclopedia.

Go outside, people.