A/N: Some kitten fluff! I wrote this ages ago and promptly forgot about it, so it's been sitting on the computer for months until I found it earlier as I was looking for a piece of homework. This is preferable to homework any day! I hope you enjoy it. :)

*It is an AU - Bilbo still left to return to the Shire, but Thorin and the boys DIDN'T DIE. Because I can only take so many feels. :D

The Trouble with Kittens

I

Sun streamed in through the open window, filling the living room with bright afternoon light, a soft breeze fluttering the curtains and keeping the smial pleasantly cool. Bilbo sat on the sofa, settling down with a book and a nice cup of tea. If there was one thing he had most missed during his adventure, aside from clean clothes and hot baths and soft beds, it was tea. Nothing made one feel better than a good cup of hot, strong tea – and a couple of biscuits and a cake, too, but he'd settle for just the tea in a pinch.

A knock at the door sounded, and he heard Hamfast calling him from the garden. Bilbo stood up and went to answer the door, intrigued as to why Hamfast was here, on his day off. He pulled open the green door and saw Hamfast standing there, holding a large basket. Bilbo frowned. Why…?

Hamfast shuffled a little. 'I don't suppose as you'd like a wee cat or two now, would ye, Mr Bilbo? Our Misty's had kittens, see, and we've managed to find homes for most of 'em but not these two, and we've really no room for more, so I was wondering…'

He trailed off and Bilbo understood the reason behind the basket. 'Why don't people want these two?' he asked, and peered into the wicker basket. There nestled in the blankets were two little kittens, blinking up at him with large green eyes. One was black with a little white spot on his chin, the other a pale ginger with white paws. Both had matching little pink noses.

'They're… a little excitable, to tell the truth. A bit playful, like,' Hamfast said, and showed Bilbo a little mark on his hand where the ginger kitten had nipped him as he tried to manoeuvre him into the basket.

Bilbo wrinkled his nose. He wasn't very good with animals, and cats always got underfoot. His aunt had had cats, and they had been incredibly irritating, always wanting food or cuddles which Bilbo didn't want to give. And they scratched. No, Bilbo was fine by himself, thank you.

'I don't think I'm really cut out for kittens,' Bilbo admitted. Hamfast's face visibly drooped, and Bilbo felt his stomach sink. He looked back at the kittens again. They were focused on him, their whiskers ruffling in the slight breeze, and when the ginger one yawned Bilbo felt something tug at his heart strings.

'Alright,' he sighed wearily. 'I'll take them.'

With a huff of relief Hamfast handed over the basket and promised to teach Bilbo everything he needed to know about looking after cats. Bilbo rather wondered what he'd got himself in for, but when the kittens began mewing softly Bilbo found himself already attached to these tiny little things. When they began a little scuffle in their basket, the ginger kitten playfully tapping the smaller black one on his nose, Bilbo was suddenly reminded of the two young dwarf princes and their almost incessant petty squabbling and play-fighting. He smiled fondly, and decided what he was going to call them.

Leaning down, he hesitantly tickled them behind their ears.

'Hello, Fíli and Kíli,' he breathed.

II

A week later Bilbo decided to fix up his window boxes by the kitchen. While Hamfast tended to the rest of the garden Bilbo liked having a little bit to do himself, but what with the kittens he'd quite neglected to attend the window boxes. There were weeds sprouting and he needed to replant some flowers there, so one balmy evening he fetched his tools and some seeds and set to work.

Fíli and Kíli had followed him outside, and were play-fighting in the grass. Their high-pitched little mews sounded quietly and more than once Bilbo turned, worried for their safety, but it had only been one of them getting the upper-paw over the other. Bilbo found it incredibly humorous that Fíli nearly always managed to beat Kíli – although the smaller kitten was able to hold his own fairly well.

Bilbo would have to write to the dwarves, and let them know of this little development. He was sure the princes would be delighted to have kittens named after them – although Bilbo could imagine Kíli's face when he discovered that even in kitten-form Fíli always beat him.

Chuckling to himself, Bilbo finished one window box and moved onto the next one. He could hear Fíli and Kíli still scampering about, and was thinking about what he could cook them for dinner (at Bag End, all residents ate well, even if they were four-footed and bewhiskered) when he turned to see what they were up to now.

And let out a gasp of distress.

The two rascals had been rolling and digging around in the window box he'd just finished pruning and planting in, sending soil flying and crushing the plants contained in it. Fresh soil littered the grass and Kíli lay in a hole he'd evidently just dug, mud in his fur and in his whiskers. Fíli was chewing on a shoot.

Both kittens froze as Bilbo shouted their names, half in exasperation but mostly in amusement (although he'd never admit that). He picked them both up by the scruff of their necks and held them up to eye-level, both kittens hanging limply from his grip. They looked at him with those wide, doleful green eyes… and Kíli licked his wrist, nuzzling against him. It was impossible to be cross at these two. With a long-suffering sigh, Bilbo set them back on the ground and sent them running off across the garden while he fixed up the spoiled window box.

He hoped the real Fíli and Kíli back in Erebor weren't behaving as badly as their feline counterparts.

III

Bilbo had had Fíli and Kíli around the smial for three weeks when Lobelia came knocking. She'd been inviting herself over a lot recently, after so nearly getting her hands on Bag End. Reluctantly Bilbo entertained her, being only a perfect host – not that she ever acknowledged it. She was determined to be grumpy and crabby whenever she visited, and Bilbo accepted her criticism while amusing himself imagining how Lobelia would react to thirteen dwarves suddenly turning up on her doorstep…

He heard her heavy knocking and stood up slowly to let her in. Fíli and Kíli noticed his movement and scampered after him. It seemed today they were determined to trip him over – Fíli kept nose-butting his leg, while Kíli decided it would be fun to weave between his legs and then stop right in front of him, causing Bilbo to have to grab onto a coat hook more than once to stop himself ending up on the floor.

Finally he reached the front door and pulled it open, Kíli draping himself over Bilbo's feet like a furry set of slippers, and was greeted by Lobelia's sour face.

'Good morning, Lobelia!' he said cheerily, but she merely sniffed and pushed past into the hall. Immediately Fíli was following her, and as Lobelia stalked down the hall to the parlour Fíli began chasing the long ribbons trailing down from Lobelia's bonnet. He couldn't reach them, but he did manage to latch himself onto her jacket and pull a shriek from Lobelia.

Bilbo just managed to stifle his laughter.

Sighing he plucked Fíli off Lobelia and scooped Kíli up, and deposited them in the parlour with Lobelia while he quickly made tea. When he returned with a tea pot and two good size seedcakes, Lobelia was sitting perfectly still on her chair while Fíli and Kíli watched her closely from Bilbo's chair. They sat unmoving, all three of them, until Bilbo entered and the kittens scampered off to wreak havoc elsewhere.

Bilbo poured tea and Lobelia accepted her cup with a huff.

'Since when have you had cats, Bilbo? And such energetic ones, too. Entirely unrespectable behaviour, if you ask me. At least Lily Boffin's are tame.'

Bilbo refrained from replying that nobody was asking her, and that Socks and Smokey were the most boring cats in all the Shire. And they weren't even pretty, unlike his little darlings.

'I got them from Hamfast,' he explained. 'The larger, ginger one is Fíli, and the small black one is Kíli. They were tiny when I got them, they're monsters now!' he laughed fondly. Kíli's tail was indeed more like a toilet brush than a tail, what with his long and fluffy fur. At least it made up for dwarf-Kíli's lack of beard, Bilbo mused with a chuckle.

Lobelia's eyes had narrowed as he said their names.

'Those names aren't very hobbit-like. Entirely inappropriate, I say; goodness knows where you thought of them.'

'They were the names of two dwarves I travelled with,' Bilbo explained.

Lobelia shuddered. 'Well, I'm certainly glad I don't know them. They don't sound completely respectable, if you ask me.'

Bilbo only just managed to contain his anger. When Fíli jumped into Lobelia's lap to snaffle her slice of cake Bilbo could only laugh at the shrill scream that sounded briefly until he decided to help, and Lobelia left soon after that.

Bilbo gave them a little plate of milk to share, and made a mental note to include this in his next letter. The kittens are certainly very protective of their namesakes, he'd write. Lobelia won't be insulting any dwarves in my presence again for a while!

IV

Bilbo sat quietly in his study. The evenings were growing chillier as autumn approached but for now the weather was still mild enough that his study window was open, and Fíli and Kíli sat on the window ledge pocking their faces out so that the breeze ruffled their faces and caused their fur to ripple. Their antics were so remarkably similar to the dwarf princes that it amazed Bilbo sometimes.

He was writing in his journal, a beautiful tome with thick vellum pages and a silky ribbon page-marker. The sound of his quill pen filled the room, and apart from the occasional warble from Fíli or Kíli there was a companionable silence.

Bilbo only became aware that something was wrong when the sound of the kittens disappeared completely. He looked over to the window sill, and his stomach flipped when they weren't there. Then he noticed a pink nose and green eyes staring at him from behind the vase sitting at the end of the desk. He felt another little fuff-ball wind around his feet.

Breathing a sigh of relief he returned to his writing, when suddenly a great ginger mass jumped at him and started attacking the quill, while his journal was assaulted from below as Kíli yanked on the ribbon.

Fíli was on his back, quill clenched tightly in his jaws and paws closed firmly around it while he tried to eat the feather. Kíli was hanging by his claws from the ribbon, swaying and causing the book to inch slowly toward the edge of the desk.

With an exasperated sigh, Bilbo tried to retrieve his quill, but after only succeeding in receiving a nip on the finger from Fíli he gave up with that; although he did gently untangle Kíli's claws from the ribbon and set him gently on the floor again. Kíli looked up at him with those huge green eyes, and Bilbo dangled the bit of string he always carried around him with him for these occasions.

Fíli promptly forgot the quill and joined his brother in chasing the string. Journal forgotten, Bilbo whiled away the evening teasing the kittens with the string until they gave up and head-butted his legs instead.

V

It was dinner time and Bilbo was frying a piece of fish, with some potatoes roasting in the oven. The smell of the fish filled the smial and inevitably drew two eager noses to the kitchen, where they jumped up onto chairs opposite Bilbo's and stared at him as he cooked.

He'd grown used to their beseeching eyes and cute little noses and heart-melting warbles. He could resist the charm of those little tongues poking out as they yawned, or the soft paddiness of their toes, or the way their whiskers fluttered. (And he wouldn't admit to anyone that he kept the whiskers they shed in a little box on his bedside table.)

And so as Bilbo served up his nice, fresh fried fish with buttered potatoes and crunchy beans, he was able to resolutely ignore the doleful and pleading looks they sent his way with equal composure as he was the long stares they tried to intimidate him with.

'You're not getting any, boys,' he told them cheerfully, tucking in.

Unfortunately, Bilbo was not as hard-hearted as he liked to believe.

When Kíli opened his mouth to mew but no sound came out, a silent meow, he fairly melted into a huge puddle. He couldn't resist his two beautiful little kittens anything.

VI

His head was fuzzy after a long day sorting accounts and checking figures and facts, and all he wanted to do right now was collapse onto his bed and fall asleep, and not wake up until lunch time tomorrow.

Bilbo changed into his night clothes and shut his bedroom door, the better to preserve heat now that the nights were cold. He'd just burrowed under his soft warm covers when he heard little mewls coming from the other side of the door.

He groaned. Fíli and Kíli would want to come in, but he wasn't getting up now. No; his eyes were too heavy and his bed was too comfortable, and he could feel himself dropping off…

But suddenly loud scratching joined the chorus of pitiful meows, and he knew he wasn't going to get any sleep tonight unless he let the wretched kittens in.

'I'm coming, I'm coming,' he muttered grumpily, regretfully pulling the covers off and blearily heading to the door. 'But I'm not opening this door again until morning, you hear?' he said, and the second the door was open even a crack Fíli and Kíli slipped through, bounding over to the bed and jumping up onto the soft mattress and instantly making themselves at home. Kíli was turning in circles and treadling the quilt to form a little nest, while Fíli was burrowed between the pillows.

With a sigh Bilbo shut the door and went back to bed, trying to avoid knocking either kitten off the bed or accidentally squashing them. As soon as he lay down and his eyes started to close again, he was jolted awake again by a soft warmth pressing against his chest. Opening one eye, he looked down to see Kíli lying stretched out in Bilbo's body heat, pressed up against the hobbit's chest. Fíli was deciding to curl around Bilbo's head like an elaborate head muff. He could feel their purrs vibrating through their little bodies.

Surrounded by fluffy kittens and warmth, Bilbo fell asleep; lulled by little kitten snores and the gentle tickle of their fur.

Finis