Jim Davis not only giving the Garfield Minus Garfield project a thumbs-up, but also creating Garfield Minus Garfields of his own.
Animation
In the prime-time TV special Garfield In the Rough, an escaped panther threatens the life of Jon and Odie. Garfield, who ran up a tree in fear, has a sudden Papa Wolf moment, dives from the tree onto the panther's back, clawing away at it with stock sound effects of an enraged housecat. He doesn't actually defeat the panther, though he does buy park rangers some time to tranquilize it without anyone getting hurt.
In the Halloween Special, when Odie and Garfield are trying to row away from the ghost pirates, and Garfield falls in the lake and starts drowning, because he can't swim. Odie then jumps out of the boat and swims back to him, then pulls him back to the boat. While being chased by ghosts. This could also be a borderline Heartwarming Moment, because he could have chosen to just save himself, but he cares too much about Garfield. To add to the heartwarming, Garfield, who was originally going to take all of Odie's trick or treat candy, states that he can keep it and have half of his own. Garfield gave up some of his food as a thank you.
He does it in the sequel as well, and that time seemed even more-awesome because the Big Bad had Liz at gunpoint up until a few seconds prior. Also note that in both movies, Jon simply needs to deck the Big BadONCE to render him unconscious.
