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Fraidy Cat is an episode of Garfield and Friends. It originally aired on October 8, 1988.

While Garfield is watching a monster movie on a stormy night, Jon walks by and informs him that he is going to the grocery store. Garfield is so hooked on the movie that he doesn’t hear a word Jon says; Jon gives up and leaves for the store anyway (he closes the front door behind him, but then it cracks open).

Odie then walks in, leaving muddy paw prints on the floor. He approaches Garfield at an especially intense part of the movie and frightens him, and while Garfield is a little upset at first, he then companionably invites Odie to watch the movie with him. Odie soon becomes frightened by the storm, and Garfield tries to comfort him until he becomes frightened himself. At the climax of the movie, a power failure occurs.

The front door opens wider, and Garfield soon notices Odie’s paw prints, but he mistakes the prints as belonging to a monster. He and Odie barricade the front door and then Garfield takes out a flashlight so they can look for Jon. After not finding Jon in his bedroom or in the kitchen, he assumes that monsters abducted him. He soon forgets this when he opens the refrigerator and decides to eat all the food to keep it from spoiling.

Just as Garfield is about to start eating, he and Odie hear Jon pounding on the front door (which he can’t open because of the barricade); they think it’s really a monster pounding on the door. On the way to the back door, Jon slips in a wet puddle and then calls for help. Garfield and Odie hear him and conclude that a monster captured him after all. Garfield tries to telephone for help but then realizes that the phone line is dead. Jon finally makes it took the back door, and his pounding on the door scares Garfield and Odie more. Still thinking it’s the monster at the door, Garfield lays a line of banana peels on the floor to trip him. Jon finally gets into the house with the help of a spare key, and he soon slips on the peels and falls down. Garfield starts to tie him up just as the electricity comes back on, and he realizes that he’s really tying up Jon.

As the movie continues to play in the distance, Jon begins to scold Garfield and Odie for taking the movie too seriously, but he quickly decides to send them to bed instead. Jon remarks how silly it is to be caught up in a movie but then he sits down and starts watching the movie himself. Soon he finds himself sleeping in the same bed as Garfield and Odie; then, after an unusually loud thunderclap, Garfield pulls the blanket over all three of them and then they apparently chatter their teeth in fright.

• This is the first episode co-written by Sharman DiVono.

• When Jon arrives and presses the doorbell, a ringing sound can be heard. This would not be possible due to the power failure.
• In one scene, when Jon is supposed to be pounding on the door, the door isn't there. He instead appears to be pounding on an open space (evidenced by the living room wallpaper).
• The telephone would have dead even if Jon hadn’t broken the cord outside, because there was a power failure.

Garfield: No, I didn’t take everything out of the refrigerator. I left two trays of ice cubes and, I think, the light bulb.

Garfield: The phone’s dead. …Which I guess is just as well, since I can’t talk anyway.

• Fraidy Cat at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Fraidy Cat at TV.com