On November 9, 2011, I published my first ever story called Akatsukittens.

Happy seventh birthday you hot mess.

The sandy colored cat's ear twitched at the sound of a voice.

'Wait,' Deidara thought, because people's ears don't usually twitch, 'what the fuck was that?'

"Senpai? Oh good, you're finally waking up!" Tobi's overly enthusiastic tone was not something Deidara enjoyed waking up to. He groaned when he opened his eyes and immediately shut them as the light did wonders for his headache‒then he immediately opened them again because he was literally ground level, face-to-face with a cat. "How are you feeling, Deidara-senpai?" it spoke with Tobi's voice. It was black with amorphous orange spots nearly taking up its face. "Everyone else woke up really irritated, so I hope you don't feel as bad. Hidan-senpai already tried killing me, so‒"

Deidara responded with also trying to kill Tobi.

At first glance it seemed like a knee-jerk reaction, but it was actually because Deidara distinctly remembered Tobi attempting something stupid that Leader-sama had explicitly said not to do, and after that everything was dark, so it was probably why Tobi had somehow turned himself into a cat and Deidara had a splitting headache. "What the hell did you do, Tobi-!" Tobi had shrieked and tried running away, but didn't even need to. Deidara stopped when he realized he was trying to strangle Tobi with paws.

"I'll tell you what that fucking idiot did!" Hidan steamed, but Deidara had to do a double-take as the shrill voice came from a silvery cat. "He fucked with some jutsu and somehow turned us all into Jashin-forsaken pussies!" Looking around, Deidara saw he was surrounded by nine cats in total, all of which had to be his fellow Akatsuki members.

"And he seemed to have sent us somewhere we don't recognize," Kisame said, as a cat with grey fur with a blue hue.

"And somehow made our chakra unusable," Zetsu's white half said, coming from a cat split down the middle between black and white, with some stray spots of the opposite color here and there.

The dump of information was dizzying, but everyone came to attention as an imposing ginger cat lashed his tail. "Are we done spouting exposition?" came Pain's icy tone. No one said anything in response. "Good. What we should be focusing on is how to unlock our chakra so we can undo this peculiar transformation jutsu. Then we can worry about where we are."

"How do we even pull that off?" Sasori said. His fur was a deep red that appeared orange in the light. "If this has been a direct attack on our chakra points, we can't manually reach our chakra. So long as the damage isn't permanent, we have to wait for our chakra to begin flowing again on its own."

"If that were the case," Kakuzu said, a large cat with tortoiseshell fur, "then theoretically I shouldn't feel my other hearts beating, since they're connected to a jutsu."

Pain considered both sides of the argument. "Itachi," he said eventually, "try activating your Sharingan."

The Uchiha, an elegant black cat, shut his eyes in concentration. After a moment, he opened them again and the crimson red of his Sharingan glowed. His eyes flickered as he looked around their surroundings, his Sharingan seeing through the box–but there was nothing to see. There was no chakra to hone in on, as if there was absolutely no living things in the area. Not counting his fellow Akatsuki members, all he saw was an empty world of gray. Out of curiosity, he tried activating his Mangekyo just for a few moments, and it didn't respond. "My Mangekyo doesn't respond to me; even my basic Sharingan feels strained."

Pain hummed. "Do you see anything?"

Itachi shut his eyes, deactivating his Sharingan to give himself a break. "Nothing. There's no chakra signatures whatsoever."

At Pain's side, Konan, a cat with fur an even deeper blue than Kisame's, suddenly turned her head with her ears turning in the same direction. She was the first to notice, but eventually everyone heard what she did: footsteps.

"Oh my god," a woman with thick brown curls said as she came into view, "god is real and he blessed me with cats."

Crysta was having an okay day. Not a bad one, far from it, but it could've been better. She was walking home with her mind buzzing with ideas to do something fun, but everything came to a halt when she heard a cat meow. And then more meows followed.

It was always a rule of thumb to never go into alleyway alone, but that rule didn't apply when cats were involved.

Walking up to a large box right in the center of the alley, she didn't even consider the possibility she could be jumped by someone, that this was a trap. She just saw a variety of adolescent kittens and that was all that mattered. "Oh my god," she gasped, as all the cats looked up at her with wide eyes, "god is real and he blessed me with cats." She crouched down on her knees. "Hello babies." The ginger cat in the middle of the box meowed up at her, and she grinned. She resisted the urge to reach in and scoop it up–

Then Crysta gasped again, more dramatically, as her eyes landed on a tortoiseshell cat with gorgeous color. "Hello beautiful!" she said excitedly, throwing her resistance to the wind and reaching in to immediately pick the cat up. At first it seemed agitated, then the ginger cat meowed again and the tortie allowed her to lift it up (though with flattened ears). "Oh you're so pretty," she cooed as she cradled the cat in her arms. She smiled down at the cat, petting down its neck–then she flinched her hand back when it brushed against a mass on the cat's back.

"Oh, baby, what's on your back?" she asked in the same tone you'd use on when inspecting a child's wound. Crysta carefully pressed her palm once more against the tortie's back. She felt four quarter sized masses. She lifted the cat up so she was looking into its bright green eyes. Its scleras seemed bloodshot. "Poor baby girl, you seem so sick–oh shit, that's a dick down there. Poor baby boy, my bad."

Tortoiseshell cats were almost always girls, so it was a common mistake.

The cat's ears flattened back again and a low growl came from his throat as another cat in the box yowled. Not wanting to get torn to pieces, she carefully put him back. As she did, a silver cat circled around him with that shriek of a meow, and the tortie smacked at its face. Crysta was concerned she was about to watch a cat fight break out (and knowing her she would've gotten ripped apart trying to break it up), but then the large ginger cat hissed at them and the two cats broke apart on their own.

"Great," Crysta said, "I found a box of basket cases–and I'm taking these basket cases home, because I can't just leave them out here."

With a deep breath, Crysta shut the lids of the box ("I know, I know," she muttered when some of the cats meowed in alarm), and hefted the box up and supported it with both of her arms. She couldn't wait to show Megan, Autumn and Dawn.

"Alright kitties," Crysta said, "time to go home."

"Where the fuck is she taking us?" Hidan demanded, his claws ripping into the cardboard below him to hold himself steady in the shifting darkness of the box getting carried away.

"Her home, idiot," Kakuzu snapped, still not exactly happy after Hidan mocking him about being fawned over.

"Shut the fuck up, pretty girl!"

"Hidan," Pain warned, stopping another fight from breaking out. "I already said it once: we have to act accordingly so the girl is more likely to trust us and keep us around."

"Well, excuse me for not being happy being stuck as a fucking cat, stuck in a fucking box, being taken away by some fucking bitch!"

"I don't think any of us enjoy being a cat, Hidan-senpai," Tobi said from the other side of the box.

That elicited a few laughs from the others, but a growl from Hidan. "I swear Tobi, I'm gonna sacrifice your ass."

"Ah, I don't think you can do that in this form Hidan-senpai."

"Snarky little fucker–"

Everyone stopped when the box got abruptly shifted, and they heard the jingling of keys. "Damn it," the woman swore above them, "carrying you fucking pussies is making it really hard to get inside."

"She has a mouth as bad as Hidan's," Sasori deadpanned.

"We're in for a real treat then," Kisame said, finding the whole thing funny. They all heard a lock clicking, an "aha!" and they were being moved once again. They all waited, wondering when she was going to let them out, then–

"Darlings, I'm home!" she called out. "And I brought a surprise!"

"Oh my god, is there more of them?" Zetsu's black half practically groaned. "I don't think I can handle much more of this." Then his white half answered, "Oh come on, maybe they'll be as amusing as this one."

"I don't think amusing is the right word," Kakuzu said.

"Annoying, more like," Sasori agreed.

"Annoying or not, we have to follow our orders," Konan said smoothly. "Pain said to act accordingly in order to survey our new surroundings. So if that means tolerating some eccentric women, so be it."

They all looked up as the box was opened up and filled with light. Along with the woman who found them, three other women also stared down into the box: one with flowing ginger hair and a light dusting of freckles, a brunette with wavy hair, and a blonde with glasses.

"They're so cute!" the blonde squealed.

"What the fuck are we going to do with them all?" the ginger asked.

"Maybe keep one or two of them," the brunette said, "then give the rest to the shelter."

"Or keep all of them," the woman who found them mumbled, brushing a curl behind her ear.

"Yes!" the blonde immediately said. "A thousand times yes!"

The ginger scowled as she studied the cats, and the brunette smiled over at her. "Let's take care of them for a day or two and go from there."

The woman who found them and the blonde both cheered, sharing excited high-fives. The ginger sighed. "Autumn, you're gonna kill me one day if you keep encouraging these two."

The brunette, Autumn, shrugged. "Sometimes you just gotta play into the chaos a little bit, Dawn."

The two stood up. "Megan," the ginger, Dawn, said, "go find the cat food. I think there's still some left over when we were feeding that outdoor cat a few weeks ago."

"Gotcha!" The blonde stood up and walked out of sight.

The woman who found them lifted the box up once more. They heard Autumn speak, "Where are you taking them, Crysta?"

Crysta grinned. "My room of course," she said. "I found them so I get first dibs."

Autumn snorted. "Of course," she echoed, and didn't stop her as the box of cats got carried away.

Taking in the interactions of the girls before them, the Akatsuki could come to one conclusion that Hidan summed up pretty well:

"I think we're fucked."

Forgive me if this seems rushed at all or if any of the writing sounds awkward. It's been a while. Hopefully I'll get back in the swing of things as I start updating more frequently.

If you go to read my original story out of curiosity, be warned: I wrote it when I was twelve and it's a hot mess. But yes. This was a rewrite several years in the making, and I finally, finally decided to commit to it after a close friend of mine (irl Megan, whose character you'll properly meet in the next chapter) fell in love with my story and wanted me to bring it back. So I decided, why not? It's very sentimental to me, being my first ever story, and as bad as it is I love looking back at it to see how far I've come.

You don't need to read the original whatsoever. This rewrite is a total redo with a better developed plot and characters. The only thing in common is the kitty plot and four of the original characters coming back. Of course I'm going to sneak in some references to the original here and there, so there's that.

So yeah. I hope you enjoy this. I'm assuming you're new, so welcome. If you're somehow one of the original readers, then (kudos to you and your patience) welcome back. I hope you have as much fun as I'm going to have.

Have a lovely day.