Jim Davis did however write the script for that story in "Garfield: his 9 lives" (1984) where Garfield suddenly goes feral and is implied to kill his elderly owner.

So yeah, even imsorryjon-level Garfield isn't offensive to Davis at all

It's clear to me that he never loved his characters or were so defensive over his art as Watterson was - at least not in Garfield. But he also seems to have respected that his audience was more invested in his characters than he was, which was probably why he kept making it (and kept the right to the comic strip itself when selling everything to Viacom a few years ago).