Mikazuki

Mikazuki is a small kitten patterned in black and white, his eyes a blend of blue and green. A yellow band circles his neck at first. Later, Samidare Amaashi swaps it for a red collar fitted with a little bell.

Affectionate and bursting with energy, Mikazuki is also something of a show-off, a smugness Mitsuki himself picks up on. He ignores any ban on the bed, demands playtime whenever the mood strikes, and prizes his freedom so much that he vanishes for stretches before reappearing without warning. The kitten has an uncanny read on bad people, which surfaces when he claws open the disguised scar of Daizen Matsushige and lays the man's crimes bare. He also adores niboshi, the small dried fish that inspires the name Hibiki later gives him.

Team 7 first crosses paths with the kitten after Nezumi Kaitō, fleeing the police, forces stolen jewellery down his throat to hide the evidence. Mitsuki carries the animal home, buys supplies at a pet shop, and settles on the name Mikazuki, giving in when the cat refuses to sleep anywhere but his bed. Freed from jail, Nezumi later tracks the now-sick kitten down and snatches him to cut the jewels back out, only to be stopped by Team 7 and arrested. A vet operates successfully, and Mitsuki resolves to let Mikazuki come and go as he pleases.

On a rainy night the cat leads Mitsuki to a wounded stranger, Samidare Amaashi, who gifts Mikazuki his belled collar and speaks of a sister who shared the name. When Mitsuki realises the man is a wanted killer and subdues him, Mikazuki licks his hand before Samidare falls comatose; Mitsuki later leaves the collar on the man's wrist at the hospital.

While Mitsuki is away on a mission in Kirigakure, an injured Mikazuki is taken in by a girl named Hibiki, who nurses him and renames him. Mitsuki reclaims the cat but, pressed by long assignments, asks Hibiki to keep watching over him. The kitten's nose for villainy proves decisive at Daizen Matsushige's shop, where he springs onto the merchant and rakes his chest, tearing away the false scar that stood as the key proof of his guilt. Daizen is arrested, and when Hibiki and her brother Kodama are sent out of Konoha, Mikazuki comes to see them off before Mitsuki calls him home.