Gary The Snail

Gary the Snail is a character in the Nickelodeon animated series series SpongeBob SquarePants, which first aired in July 1999. Gary is Spongebob's pet snail, although his behaviour in several aspects resembles a housecat.

Gary is an intelligent, fully domesticated, sea snail born in Bikini Bottom. His intelligence shines through in the fact that he generally has much smarter solutions to SpongeBob's dilemmas than SpongeBob does. Gary tends to disagree with some of SpongeBob's ideas, and usually makes an effort to warn SpongeBob. Some of Gary's meows are lower pitched, some are higher pitched; these could possibly indicate that Gary uses different tones of his voice to communicate with SpongeBob SquarePants. Gary loves pretending to be Squidward, playing music, reading books, and eating Snail-Po Snail Food, enjoys famous literature such as selected works by Emily Dickinson, and is an accomplished snail-poet himself. He has his own bed, exercise wheel, and water and food bowls, and expects his food bowl to always be full. He also knows how to play the violin, as revealed in the episode Something Smells. It is also noted that Gary can tie his shoes. SpongeBob SquarePants consistently mentions throughout the series that Gary pays a majority of the bills, if not all. Gary the Snail is inquisitive, curious, and always ready to learn something new. Gary serves SpongeBob his toast and jelly, every time he goes to work in the morning, and also serves him coffee. It also seems that he sometimes answers the phone for SpongeBob SquarePants as hinted at in Jellyfish Hunter.