Deputies: Wife shoots husband in fight to protect family cat

SPRING, TX (KTRK) -- An argument between a husband and his wife ends in gunfire, sending him to the hospital, and landing her in custody. Investigators say the shooter was a woman taking aim at her own husband to protect her cat.

"Our neighborhood is so quiet," said neighbor Penny Brooks. "I just don't want anything like this to be happening in our neighborhood."

It happened at a home on Seaton Valley in northwest Harris County at 7:15am Tuesday. Precinct 4 Constables got a call from a man who said he had been shot, allegedly by his wife.

"I didn't hear anything," Brooks recalled. "I didn't know about it until I started to walk my dog, and there were constables and all sorts of cars out here."

Once they got to the scene, Precinct 4 constables began to piece together an unusual story. The wife, Audrey Miller, allegedly shot her husband because he threatened to kill one of the couple's cats.

"She must have loved that cat more than him," said neighbor Chris Russell. "There's something wrong with that no matter how you look at it."

Investigators say the exact reason of the initial argument is still unclear. But they do believe that after the couple argued, the husband threatened the life of one of the cats and that's when Miller apparently shot her husband in the side of the stomach while both were in the backyard.

He was treated and released from the hospital. Miller, 42, has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. All the cats were unhurt, while a neighborhood remains puzzled.

"I wouldn't want anyone to be shooting any animal, period," Brooks said. "We're definitely animal lovers."

The husband returned home Tuesday afternoon, and while he declined to talk on camera, he did say that he is all right but the situation is far from over.

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local, miya shay

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