Add Mayor Whiskers & Captain Whitaker back into game?

I usually just add them straight into a family who I think would want to adopt them! But to get them back to single-pet households, here's my slightly unhinged workaround:

1. In CAS, add each pet to single-sim households with random sim who you don't care about. Move them into "other households"
2. Configure custom Neighborhood Stories for those two households. Enable only "Die In Accidents". (This affects the sims, not the pets.)
3. Disable default Neighborhood Stories for everyone else, so only your two test households are running stories. Wait a night or two for the sims to be... "sacrificed"
4. Once the sims are gone the pets will be single and homeless once more! Then you can reset your Neighborhood Stories however you like :)

You could also just add the pets to elder households where the sims will die off soon without having to mess with Neighborhood Stories, but then you'd have to deal with all the other sims aging too.

Hopefully someone else has a simpler solution than this!