Demo capx
Run as it is, you see no text in the layout.
Go in the event sheet, right click on any group, set as active it does pick the black cat.
It does since in the IDE, I've setted the animation frame to be singular, an instance variable number and an instance variable boolean to be singular (there's only one black cat (anim frame = 1), favorite=true, fave = 1).
This is not a workaround, this is how events work.
At least that's the setting and the solution how I understand it from everything you described so far.