Returned pet shenanigans: Is this a sign of apocalypse? What should I do?

[rufio]

One of my lots has some tuxedo cats on it that I don't pay much attention to.  They hate each other and often have fights; after the last fight the loser decided to soup and ran away.  Just now in my game, I got a "hey I found your lost pet" call - the picture in the dialog was of an all-white cat that obviously wasn't the cat that had run away, but I was busy with a new baby and figured it was just an icon glitch, and said yes.  A little while later, I notice a white cat getting under everyone's feet, and it turns out it's the good witch's familiar.  The witch herself is nowhere in sight, the white cat is not on the family portrait bar, and the lost cat is (according to its icon) still lost, but the white cat has a pie menu that indicates that it is part of the family and not an NPC or a stray.

So,
a) Is this standard EA borkiness, or is it a sign of impending BFBVFS?
b) Will simply deleting the white cat with move_objects remove it permanently from the lot and not cause any problems with cat-summoning in the future?
c) Has this made it impossible for the original lost cat to ever be returned? (Not that I miss it, but I'd like for it to die of natural causes and not clutter up the family portrait bar for eternity.)

[J. M. Pescado]

I'm gonna go with Standard EA Borkedness. It probably thinks your witchy familiar cat is the lost cat.

[rufio]

Yeah I figured, but I wondered if it wasn't some kind of pointer-corruption related thing.

Anyway, I reloaded the lot and the witch cat was nowhere to be found, so maybe that isn't broken.  The lost cat also seems not to be regenerating its motives, though, so I guess I'll just wait and see what happens when it reaches the critical failure point.  Can pets actually die of hunger, or are they just taken away by some NPC?

[Tarlia]

They're not supposed to be able to die of anything but old age, the pet police will show up and take it before it starves. However, since it's now not on the lot and therefore can't directly be taken away, it's hard to know what'll happen.

[Liz]

Could have been a possible result of the tux cat being stuck "off-lot" at the portal?

[rufio]

You mean the motive decay?  If that were the case, would I be able to summon it with the lot debugger?  I guess I'll have to try that next time I play the lot.

[Liz]

That's what I thought of when you mentioned the motive drain. I have no idea why the switcheroo with the familiar, unless the game counted the tux cat as home already, what with being right there in the portal, and decided to whip the witch's familiar (as the family pet that wasn't currently "there") onto the lot and see if that simmered things down.