Pets purchased on community lot disappear

Hi everyone, 

I'm playing the Sims 2 legacy edition and I've had issues with pets since its release, thankfully any pets I now make in create a sim stay with my family but if I try to buy a pet from a community lot, like Pepe's pets, they just completely vanish once I return home. 

The Sim has memories of buying the pet but it is just replaced with 'Obtained $Subject', the pet doesn't appear in the family and the memory is blank. 

I was wondering if anyone else was experiencing this or had a work around for buying a pet later on rather than having to make it in create a sim or adopting one.