FOR me, most nights, going to bed is not easy.

After a bath I enter the bedroom to join my husband, but, often, I find someone else has got there before me.

It’s nothing kinky - with my heavy-duty, passion-killing nightdress and his sensible M&S pyjamas we wouldn’t make good swingers - it’s the cat.

Our ten-year-old female pet Amelia beds down beside my husband, stretched out, taking up most of my side of the bed.

Fair enough, if she would budge over and allow me to slip in alongside, but she won’t.

In fact, the moment I approach the bed she glares at me as if to say ‘there’s no room here for you’, and if I so much as touch the duvet she growls and hisses.

The only way I can shift her is to lift the duvet and roll her off, which results in even more growling - before we got her I thought only dogs growled - and black looks.

Cats can be dreadful bullies. It came as no surprise to me to read the findings of a study by the University of Lincoln revealing how cats are far bigger bullies than dogs. Of the 750 owners of both animals took part, more than half said their cat had menaced their dog.

Well, I can report, cats bully humans too, and they also taunt other cats. I love Amelia dearly, but she definitely bullies me, and she bullies our other pet cat Pumpkin. She hates him coming upstairs to bed with us, as he did well before she arrived, and often lies at the top of the stairs waiting to attack him.

I’ve come across cat ambush tactics before. There’s a sweet little Westie in our village who remains terrified of me simply because he associates me with our former cat Gordon, a big ginger Tom, who bullied dogs.

He once leapt from a neighbour’s gatepost, where he had been on sentry duty, on to the back of an unsuspecting hound. Dogs would be noticeably nervous walking past our house.

This is not to say that dogs don’t menace cats. We lost one cat, and another was seriously injured due to dog attacks in public areas near our home, although in both cases the animals should have been on leads.

But while dogs chase and attack cats, unlike felines, they don’t purposely tease and taunt. They don’t bully.

Cats let you know when they are annoyed. When we return from holiday, it is not uncommon for our cats to sit with their backs to us - it is their way of taking umbrage.

Amelia was previously owned by my brother, whose friends told me she “wears the trousers.” She certainly does. I would go so far as to say that I am sometimes scared of her. I often pussyfoot - to use an apt term - around her at the top of the stairs in case she lashes out at me.

But then, at other times, she can be affectionate, rubbing up against me. Cats are fickle animals, lacking the slavering devotion to individuals that dogs give, but if they do prefer one person over another - Amelia is definitely a man’s woman - they make it clear.

Like the old-fashioned school bullies, cats - some more than others - make sure others know their place.

As bedtime continues to throw up problems, I have been tempted to retreat to the spare room - especially as I get no support from my husband who reprimands me for turfing her off, but I am standing my ground.

If, however, I wake up one of these days with scratches on my cheek, I will have no problem identifying the culprit.