In Kipling's story "Below the Mill Dam", this passage occurs:
"He shouted large and vague threats to my address, last night at tea, that he wasn't going to keep cats who 'caught no mice'. Those were his words. I remember the grammar sticking in my throat like a herring-bone."
The speaker, like all cats, is fastidious to the point of pedantry, so the point of grammar can only be a trivial, or even ridiculous, one; but even so I can't see anything wrong with the expression. Can any fellow-pedant, or cat, enlighten me?
Answer
It's the verb tense.
*I'm not going to keep cats who caught no mice.
is wrong, it should be "catch no mice" or "who have caught no mice."
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