cats disappearing

survival multiplayer (either LAN game or actually running the minecraft server jar) is having an annoying issue of disappearing cats.

I understand that cats won't teleport to you out in the middle of the water, but now it's a matter of i'll be sitting in one place, fishing, with a cat at my side... and an hour later it's gone.. or i'll set two cats sitting in a location then come back less than 24 hours later and only one is there, not two. i thought people were killing my cats at first so i tested by making an obsidian box to store them in (so someone would have to break the obsi to get in) .. and when i came back only 1 of the 2 cats i left sitting were still there.

Kittens tend to disappear MUCH more frequently than grown cats, but grown cats are still vanishing as well.

I'm aware that sometimes I'll sprint so fast that I'll leave a cat behind in a chunk that then gets unloaded before he has a chance to tp to me, and I've learned to work around that.. but this is different.. I can literally be sitting right there with my cats staring at them and they'll vanish. I assume they're trigging despawn at some point but that's only a guess.

I had 7 cats this morning. I'm already down to none again.

I'm willing to get videos of the behavior, if necessary, as it's been aggravating me for quite some time because I have hearing problems and need my cats to protect me from creepers.