As I was going to St Ives

It is generally thought that the rhyme refers to St Ives, Cornwall, when it was a busy fishing port and had many cats to stop the rats and mice destroying the fishing gear, although some people argue it was St Ives, Cambridgeshire, as this is an ancient market town and therefore an equally plausible destination.

[1][6] If everyone mentioned in the riddle were bound for St Ives, then the number would be 2,802: the narrator, the man and his seven wives, 49 sacks, 343 cats, and 2,401 kits.

This interpretation provided the basis for a verse reply from "Philo-Rhithmus" of Edinburgh, in the September 8, 1779, issue of the Weekly Magazine:[7] Owing to various ambiguities in the language of the riddle, several other solutions are possible.

[8] In this case, there is no trick; just an arithmetical calculation of the number of kits, cats, sacks, and wives, along with the man and the narrator.

If only the narrator were travelling to St Ives, but the phrase, "kits, cats, sacks, and wives" excludes him, then the answer to the riddle is zero.