How can you make "to be" explicit and simple in this future conditional sentence?

I can say "Jerry's been a bad pussycat this morning" or "Hey, Jerry, you be a good pussycat now" or "Jerry's been active all morning so he's being a good pussycat now". All these involve the use of the verb be.

Now if I said "if Jerry bes a bad pussycat, put him in the laundry," I'll sound ungrammatical. How else can you say this without being specific about the verb? I understand the future tense of to be is is but then it sounds like present tense rather than future tense.

I don't want to say "if Jerry behaves badly" because it's too complex. And I don't want to say "if Jerry is bad" because that implies current state rather than future state.

Should it be "if Jerry would be bad..." or "if Jerry should be bad" perhaps?

Solution 1:

Use the subjunctive mood here. In order to form the future subjunctive mood for to be in clauses in which there is doubt, you would use if I/he/she/it, etc. were to be as follows:

Were Jerry to be bad, put him in the laundry.

If Jerry were to be bad, put him in the laundry.

or you could say:

Should Jerry be bad, put him in the laundry.

The last choice sounds best to my ear.

The subjunctive mood is to be used when talking about events that somebody imagines.

Solution 2:

While the subjunctive that Spare Oom gives may be grammatically correct, it will still sound very strange to most people (though his third choice is definitely the least uncommon of them). What I would recommend as "everyday English" is:

If Jerry starts being bad, put him in the laundry.

P.s. The future tense of "to be" is not "is", it's "will be", as in He was bad, he is bad, he will be bad.