Sims 2 Bug: Can't Place Pets (Birthday Bundle Edition)

Hello all! We all knew the release would be crazy & buggy, but this one has ben driving me insane. Basically, if I create a pet w/ a house hold in CAS and try to place the household on a lot, the pet disappears. Interestingly enough, the Sim will still want to interact with the pet or want to buy a bed for the pet. TLDR I cannot create pets and place them with a household with either the Steam version or EA app version of the game.

However, grabbing a premade Sim that already has a pet from one of the premade households and placing them on a lot works just fine. The pet loads in and everything is fine. I tried this with the Roseland family & it worked fine (pictures included).

I then tried to create a household with ONLY a pet to merge into an existing household. The pet showed up as a black box after merging the household, and when loading the household, the pet was not there. Images attached.

I have tried this both on the Steam version (I luckily got a refund!!) and then I purchased the bundle on the EA app thinking that may have been the issue. It wasn't. Neither version let me have a pet.

update: It appears to only be the british shorthair cat breed...?  I was able to load in a Bombay just fine.