Village cats despawn or get lost when traveling away from villages

Issue: Village cats either wander away or despawn when chunks are unloaded. It's difficult to determine which is what happens.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Load chunk with village, there will be cats that spawn in when the village is initially loaded. 
2. Don't tame them, walk/fly away from the chunk until it unloads, (for me it took several tries and quite awhile to reproduce reliably, it seems more reliable in survival for some reason)
3. The cats will despawn, or just go missing (possibly wander off while the chunk is still loaded)

What went wrong?: The cats that spawn in villages are not supposed to despawn from what I know. Also, when testing this, when quitting the world and rejoining, sometimes the cats shifted through different coat colors.

 

Untamed village cats also don't seem affected by a village area and are not bound to the village, and they like to wander off, sometimes hundreds of blocks away from the village. This is why I think they may be wandering off rather than despawning.