Thing of the Day...Cat gut?

Medical School put up the challenge and he’s beat me the last five games, but it’s tennis and tennis is tennis. My racquet is Target style already warped from when I threw it at the brick wall over and over again.

Good strings, City Sports guy told Medical school, are made out of cat gut. Insert my usual skepticism. Cat gut? What is it? It can’t be, can it? I love cats all over the country- where are they getting the cats for this cat gut? And for tennis racquets? Rackets?

Turns out, catgut, comes from the intestines of sheep, sometimes horses or mules, too. It’s stretched, seeped in lye, scraped and packaged and disgustingly used as strings for musical instruments, surgical stitches and racquets.

According to Wikipedia, the best strings come from the toughest gut- my gut’s producing dollar-store strings apparently. Let’s end this, kit means fiddle and the strings were called kitgut, which over time became catgut. No cats were used in the making of this racquet that just kicked your ass.