As I was Going to St. Ives

Kittens and Cats - Count If You Can

 

Wells gives the most complete depiction of this verse, with both the most hints as to the answer and the clearest portrayal of the number of wives, sacks, cats and kits. Her version takes seven pages to illustrate, as we move through the multiplication poem. The Provensen's illustration is also highly accurate, showing seven wives weighted down by huge sacks, each wife carrying forty-nine cats and three-hundred and forty three kittens! Barnes-Murphy shows us the wives on one page and the sacks, cats and kits on the facing page, however, only one wife's sacks are shown, then one sack's cats, then one cat's kittens. Blegvad's picture is fairly typical. It shows seven wives, each holding one sack, with a few more on the ground. Each sack appears to have one cat , and only nine or ten cats are shown. The illustration by Katz has more cats than that, about fifty, but even though it looks like a lot of cats for eight people to be holding, it is still only slightly more than one wife would be carrying, according to the poem.