Los Angeles ? Cats. Dogs. Those can be fighting words in some circles.

Cats are “nasty, stinking creatures,” says Mark David of Warrensburg, Mo. And dogs? They’re noisy, disruptive and “lick you and themselves,” counters Sanford Reikes of Louisville, Ky.

Clearly, there are dog people and there are cat people. But it’s not much of a contest: 74 percent of people like dogs a lot, and only 41 percent like cats a lot.

Cats win the dislike vote handily, according to an Associated Press-Petside.com poll. Fifteen percent of the adults questioned said they disliked cats a lot while the number who said they disliked dogs a lot was just 2 percent.

About 59 percent of American households own pets, according to the poll. About 74 percent of pet owners polled said they had dogs, and 47 percent said they had cats.

Those most likely to dislike cats were blacks, Hispanics and married men. Men were a bit more likely than women to say they disliked cats.

The AP-Petside.com poll was conducted Oct. 1-5, 2009, by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media. It involved telephone interviews on landline and cell phones with 1,967 adults nationwide, including 1,166 pet owners and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points for all adults. The margin of sampling error is higher and varies for results based on sub-samples.