Trade Inn cat reset level

There was a prior post on here titled "Kitcoon reset level after feeding and exiting game". I tried commenting there but I got an error. So I am making a new post. I have been opening up Don't Starve Together to give my trade inn cat treats, pet him, and clean up after him daily even when I didn't enter a world. This past week I have been playing with my kids so I would do my daily cat care before entering our world. But this morning I opened it up to play and he had run away even though I was petting, treating, and cleaning him. I adopted a new cat and it's HIM, same guy, like he was reset. Oh and it was around day 53. I stopped taking daily photos of him we he started growing. The below image shows the last photo on day 40 of my old cat on top and new cat that I just took a screenshot of today.