Guts for garters

This is driving me slightly insane, the phrase "i'll have your guts for garters" taken on face value is stomach churning! I would love to know where it came from and the meaning behind it-apart from the obvious!

It's an old British military slang. Ugly, isn't it!? Wonder if it came from the vile punishments they meted out in the old days...gutting someone and actually using the parts...aaaahhh! I quit!

Catgut is a material used for the strings of musical instruments and for surgical sutures, made of the dried twisted intestines of sheep or horses, but not cats. It does not require a huge leap of the imagination to move from that understanding to the voicing of a threat to visit the same fate on the intestines of someone who is annoying you.