Due to code reuse, if (very big if) Bethesda FINALLY fix it, it would ensure that no future games will have this problem. Hell, if the code is compatible with earlier games, they can even patch them all up. Money spent on making a product better is well spent. A lot better than spending man hours on vetting every version of every console mod.
I imagine that giving every NPC and the player char a mass would do the trick in the cat scenario, if object mass is less than colliding object mass by (lets say) >50kg, then object flies away like it was kicked away when run into. Else if object mass is less than colliding object mass by >10kg, the object would be pushed away on impact when run into.
Then we can kick the cats and see them fly in game. And children. lol... Sounds screwed up, but that's Fallout and it's more realistic and better than watching NPC get stuck due to insignificant obstacles. And why not the stupid dog, molerats, radroaches, etc? Some idiot molerat think that it got you by appearing behind you? Give it a good kick and watch it fly.
As in all things IT, things can be made more complex/difficult, or easy.
The easy way to solve the farming issue that you pointed out could be to create a farmland first, and making the farmland large enough so that no one tends to crops through walls. Or make the crops plantable only if it's a distance away from any walls/boulders.
The difficult way to solve it would involve detecting walls, knowing that it's on the wrong side of the wall, etc.
After seeing Bethesda's works, I think that in the unlikely event that they fix all these nonsense, they'd take the easy way out and not solve the real issue.
If such nonsense is observable, then Bethesda has failed miserably to create a good AI for the NPCs. The lack of observation does not indicate the lack of such events. As I have said, no modern games have this nonsense, only Bethesda. And those games are not Single-Player only games. Look at your GPS application on your phone or Google maps. They don't get you to drive through buildings, do they? It is doable and has been done many times.