Catgut Catgut Catgut is a type of cord that is prepared from the natural fibre found in the walls of animal intestines. Catgut makers usually use sheep or goat intestines, but occasionally use the intestines of cattle, hogs, horses, mules, or donkeys. Despite the name, catgut manufacturers do not use cat intestines. The word "catgut" may have been an abbreviation of the word "cattlegut". Alternatively, it may derive by folk etymology from "kitgut" or "kitstring"—the word "kit", meaning fiddle, having at some point been confused with the word "kit" for a young cat; The word kit, being derived from fiddle in
Strings (tennis) stringing may be a good alternative to natural gut and multi-filament strings. This is especially true for those who have had tennis elbow and find natural gut string to be too costly. Metal wire, usually piano wire, was used in some historical racquets. The "gauge" number determines the thickness of the string. A string rated with a high gauge number is a thinner string, and vice versa. Thinner strings typically offer higher performance but break more frequently than thicker strings. Virtually all modern raquets are strung in a criss-cross horizontal-vertical pattern. Various other patterns have been used in history with