These political rivals are fighting over rats like cats and dogs.

Curtis Sliwa claimed Saturday he was on the receiving end of a serious tongue lashing from Mayor Eric Adams — which allegedly included an F-bomb — after the Guardian Angels founder and former mayoral candidate was spotted by cops near a Brooklyn apartment house Hizzoner owns, trying to help rid the block of a vermin problem.

Sliwa, a Republican who lost the 2021 mayoral race to Adams, was riding a Manhattan-bound C-train Friday night shortly after he completed some preliminary work to set up living quarters for feral cats along a porch area of Adams’ Lafayette Avenue brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant — which Sliwa claims is a hotspot for rodents.

Publicist Todd Shapiro called Sliwa and connected him with Adams — and that’s where the “Angel” claims the mayor gave him a devil of a time.

Adams “was talking like a maniac,” Sliwa told The Post. “He was screaming at me: ‘Stay out of my f—king building!’ Instead, he should have been thanking me.”

Shapiro, who has worked with both larger-than-life pols and was on the call, has a different version of events.

He insisted Adams never screamed or cursed but was “very concerned” that Sliwa was “trespassing” on the property, even if Sliwa never actually entered the building.

The noisy subway, which traveled through underground tunnels, caused some complications, with the call dropping twice and all sides admittedly hearing only parts of the conversations.

The Mayor’s Office also adamantly denied Adams cursed or screamed at Sliwa.

“Curtis Sliwa’s 15 minutes of fame were up long ago,” said Adams spokesman Fabien Levy.

“An independent witness confirmed Curtis made up lies about the mayor, and this fabrication doesn’t make it any more likely that New Yorkers will take him seriously or that he would ever actually be hired for a city position.”

“This sideshow has gone on long enough, and the mayor will not engage in this distraction when there is important city business to focus on,” he added.

However, the tough-talking Sliwa refused to back off his remarks — even after being told Shapiro was siding with Adams’ version of the story.

“If someone talked like that to me in the street, I’d knock him out,” fumed Sliwa, who is versed in judo and karate.

“I am certainly not going to do [Adams] harm but he knows” not to “treat me like a hood rat. I am not a hood rat.”

The rivals at least agree on one thing: the city has a major rat problem that has swarmed since the pandemic. But they have differences of opinion on how it should be handled.

Sliwa on Wednesday first floated his plan to release feral cats at Adams’ multi-unit brownstone and to “help” the rodent problem by serving as the city’s rat czar “at no cost” after the mayor’s property was hit with two tickets for vermin.

He and some Guardian Angels then spent parts of Thursday and Friday cleaning up the entire block, first collecting bags of trash and other debris and then scrubbing the public street and sidewalk areas with ammonia.

When asked about Sliwa’s desire to be the city’s rat czar for free, Adams told WPIX-TV on Friday that 90 candidates are being considered and that he is close to hiring one — although all signs point to it not being Sliwa.

“First of all, anyone that lives in a studio apartment with 17 cats, that says a lot,” quipped Adams, referring to Sliwa and his wife Nancy famously caring for the team of furry friends in a 300-foot Upper West Side apartment.

“We know this is serious work. Although I will clown around with Curtis, this is a serious job. … We’re going to pick the best person, and the Number 1 criteria: they must hate rats as much as I do.”