House thinks that Morgan has Churg-Strauss Syndrome, so he assigns Taub to... change the litter box. It's punishment for ratting House out to Cuddy. Taub walks out instead. Look, I know the economy's shitty, but c'mon, Taub. The job market isn't that great either. Kumar decides he's going to go test the patient and picks up his backpack off the chair (why he would need his backpack for that, I don't know), only to have the Death Kitty squeal and jump out of it. Kumar jumps as well. House put it in there so he could figure out why Kumar's such a "credulous idiot." Is he trying to get all of his staff to quit today? Oh, wait. That would mean Cameron and Chase would have to come back. Go for it, House! Can Fourteen next! House ignores me, though, and tells Thirteen to start Morgan on steroids.
Taub, meanwhile, is sipping some fine brandy with his friend. He reminisces about the good ol' days and finally admits to having an affair with the daughter of one of his partners. Even though he signed a non-disclosure with the company, he eventually told his wife about the affair. Ooooooh. That explains it. I was afraid I'd missed something.
Thirteen rushes into Morgan's room to discover her urine's turned brown. DUN DUN DUN. Afterward, House strolls into his office, dodging a very tall ladder that's set up in the room. Thirteen thinks that Morgan is still faking, because nothing explains the brown urine. House then opens an umbrella at Kumar and flaps it at him. "How do you know it's still brown?" Foreman asks. "Has to be," House fires back, "Once you've gone brown..." Cue lingering look on Foreteen. Ugh. Foreman thinks the green dye never left her system, and purple urine (a strep bovis infection from colon cancer) would mix with green to make brown. Except the colonoscopy was clean. Hrm. House spills a salt shaker on the table with a feigned gasp of "Oh no!" only to be informed by Kumar that he wasn't scared by the umbrella either. Taub returns, wondering why there's a ladder in the room. "Oops! Forgot that one," House says as he hobbles over to move it over the doorway. House also orders a pill-cam to find the tumor. Before Kumar leaves, he tosses a handful of salt over his left shoulder and squeezes his way around the ladder. House grins. He also brings Taub over to his desk to chat about what a coward he is and bluntly states that cowards make terrible employees.
House wheels Morgan into the room with the coma patients and points out that "Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill" has quickly snuggled up to Coma Patient #3. She did yesterday as well, and the guy's still breathing. Morgan thinks she's just confused in this new environment. House tells the story of the beginnings of the Seventh Day Adventist Church and William Miller, who predicted Jesus would make a showing in 1844, but when he didn't, Miller made new predictions and drew in more and more followers, despite the fact that he continued to be wrong. "I know I sound just like them, but I also know you're wrong," Morgan tells House, "Something terrible's gonna happen to me."
House walks out of the room with a conspicuous bag under his arm (containing Death Kitty) and runs into Wilson, who can't understand why House is pushing her to question her beliefs during this time of crisis. They get into an already-occupied elevator and Wilson asks where they're going. "Experimenting," House says, as the Death Kitty makes a rather loud mewing noise. "Stop it, Dr. Wilson. It's just not cute anymore!" House scolds for the benefit of the other guy in the elevator. Hee! That's the House I know and love. This episode has been fantastic for the one-liners.
House tries to get the Death Kitty to bond with the oncology treatment children, but Wilson's having none of that. Death Kitty doesn't seem to like the idea too much either. Wilson thinks the reason he's still pursuing the Death Kitty issue is either that he doubts himself, or cares what other people think. But House doesn't finish the conversation -- he gets a text message that the pill-cam came back, so he stuffs Death Kitty haphazardly back into the bag and takes off.
The pill-cam came back clean as well. House uses his laser pointer to make Death Kitty attack Kumar's legs. Thirteen thinks they're wasting their time, but Kumar points out they wouldn't have seen a flat lesion -- skin cancer that could have metastasized in her intestines. House orders Kumar to check for melanomas. On his way out, though, Kumar has a staredown with Death Kitty. Guess who wins? You betcha.
Kumar calls House at home in the middle of the night to report that they didn't find cancer, but instead discovered some rather large spider veins on Morgan's back that weren't there previously. Cushings Disease could explain everything but the bronchospasm (which actually could be explained by a rare form of Cushings aswell). Kumar also informs House that Coma Patient #3 died (and he was stable for a year and a half), and he thinks that means Morgan's going to die as well.
The next morning, House and the team scope the grounds for the Death Kitty, who appears to have escaped during the night. House is now convinced that something's going on with the Death Kitty. Foreman still can't figure out if the Cushings is in Morgan's adrenals or brain. House starts going off on how he shouldn't be looking for the Death Kitty right now, he should be using the Death Kitty to figure out what's wrong with Morgan when he suddenly gets short of breath. He takes a swig out of his coffee cup and Kumar tries to tend to him, except House spits blood all over Kumar's chest and face. Ewww! Thankfully it's not actually blood. Cranberry juice. "Cheaper than blood. And more Crantastic!" House exclaims. Punishment for Kumar leaving the door open the night before in the throes of the staredown with the Death Kitty. House tells Foreman to have Chase do a sampling of the blood from Morgan's brain to check for Cushings there.
Taub, meanwhile, is having breakfast with his friend, saying that he's not who he used to be and he wants to go work for him. There's no room for him, though, either in research or investment. His friend eventually agrees to take Taub on in a smaller investor position, but warns him that there's not going to be an immediate payoff. Taub's okay with that.
House is down in the morgue with Coma Patient #3 and Wilson, who wants to know what House is looking for. "Catnip, chew toy -- I dunno. That's why I'm looking, " House says. Chase and Foreman walk in to inform House that Morgan went into cardiac arrest during the sampling. They got her back, but she's not in good shape. Her ATCH levels are slightly elevated, though, which could confirm the Cushings is in the brain. Chase points out that Cushings is usually associated with central body obesity, but Morgan's in good shape. Foreman wants to know if they should remove the pituitary right now, but House shouts, "That's not a question for me! It's a question for the patient. Present both sides and let her decide." Foreman and Chase leave and Wilson wonders why the hell House is up to his elbows in a corpse instead of making a case to the patient for one side or the other, as he normally does. House insists Morgan's case is solved and, at this point, he's more concerned with scientific experimentation. "I put up with your obsessions. I even encourage them," Wilson points out, "for one reason. They save lives. I don't know what you're doing now."
Chase explains the options to Morgan, and she goes with removal, even though Chase suggests otherwise. Taub stops in to tell House he's resigning. House is pretty sure Taub's gonna come right back at grovel at his feet. "Bring donuts! Everyone loves those bear claws," House calls after Taub's retreating figure. Later, as House is looking over files, he sees Death Kitty sneaking back into the office. He calls it, and it jumps up on his laptop, purring contentedly. House pets the cat until... breakthrough!
Meanwhile, Taub waits at the corporate offices of his friend's company, only to be informed by a secretary that the friend no longer works there. Whoops! He never was the CEO, just a temporary receptionist who's now in custody. "I went to high school with him!" Taub insists. "That's what everyone else thought too," the secretary says. Thankfully, Taub didn't give him the money yet. Oh, Taub. You totally got conned. But I loved watching it.
House barges in on Wilson to inform him that he was wrong. The cat wasn't predicting deaths, it was trying to find a warm place to sleep. The dead patients were either feverish or equipped with heating blankets. "Congrats. Because of your crazy obsession with this cat, you've solved a completely trivial mystery," Wilson says. The long and short of it is that Morgan was warm because she had a carcinoid tumor in her appendix. "Congradulations. You probably saved her life. Definitely saved her needless surgery," Wilson says. About that... House picks up the phone to stop the potentially life-threatening surgery. Apparently gloating came before stopping a potentially life-threatening brain surgery.
Morgan packs up as House enters her room, thanking him for saving her life. But House is just there to gloat. Again. Morgan thinks the fact that Death Kitty chose that exact moment to sit on House's computer means score one for the cosmos, score zero for science, logic, and reason. Morgan also says that she checked up on William Miller, and his followers never faded. House thinks this is because his followers were as deluded as he was. "Maybe he just gave them something to live for," Morgan muses. "Feel better," House says as he leaves.
House heads back into his office and sits down on his chair to play with his Hot Wheels before bounding upright. He pats the seat of the chair, smells his hand and yells, "Kumar! Cat pee on my chair?" "Blood on my face?" Kumar counters. "Fake blood! You're paying for the dry-cleaning," House responds before hobbling out of the office. "Why are you still alive?" Thirteen asks when he's gone. "I'm not sure," Kumar says, still holding his breath. "I guess he's impressed you stood up to him -- and got a cat to pee on his chair," Thirteen says, pointing out the obvious for those of us who were too busy drinking during this episode to connect the dots ourselves. "Yeah. A cat..." Kumar says eeeevilly. First? Ew. And second? EWWWW.
As House leaves, Taub comes up the elevator with a box of bear claws. "See you tomorrow," House says. "Yeah," Taub grumbles. He sits down on a table in House's office and looks dejectedly at the floor until the Death Kitty comes up to him and meows, tail twitching. Taub stares at it and.... scene.
Hrm. Well, the medicine seemed like it was all over the place this episode, and the writers really seem to like this 'House vs. Faith' conflict, because they seem to use it every other week. However, Taub's journey was tragically fun to watch, as was House's obsession with the Death Kitty. Plus, it was actually an episode about, y'know, House. And he was spot-on in the dialog. I did like that Cuddy seems to be back to her bitchy, mischevious self, as the psuedo-post partum storyline was starting to get me depressed as well. Plus, I really enjoyed Judy Greer's performance.
Next week on House: Nothing new until May 30th -- sorry, kiddies! I hear it has to do with "locked in" syndrome, though.
