Greyed out LRCC (zipped) Backups

Hi, I have 2 catalog issues I'm confused about;

1.) My Lr backups, that I have saved into a folder on my TimeMachine backup HDD, are showing greyed out. I thought it may have had something to do with that extenal drive becoming full recently. I decided to replace it with a new drive and start TM backups for my iMac again but before I made that decision I tried to just make some room on the old full drive by deleting some files. I did this and then I noticed that my LR backups were not showing greyed out anymore (although I didn't try to open any).  I then dragged 2 of my LR backups from the full drive to another external drive I use for photo storage but they then appeared greyed out there. I then went ahead and replaced the full TM drive with a new one and started TM backup again. Im running with a single Lr catalog that is being zipped because its a few Gb in size.

2.) When I close LR and then re-open, it opens in an old catalog from the past stored in a old backup folder on a different extenal drive, instead of the selected folder Ive assigned it to backup to when Lr closes. Its been a little unsettling seeing it open in this old catalog and then going to the last backup Ive made and finding it greyed out. But I managed to get back into my last backup, and this is the weird part, I had to go back a few in the backup list, into last year, and found one that wasnt zipped and not greyed out, opened that one and Lr was up to date, showing my last shoot a few days ago. I have no idea why an old catalog would be up to date. Or why the others are greyed out.

I'm running LrC  (release 2015.14) on Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6.  Old stuff I guess but I'm terrified of updating my OS or LR on this old iMac, or if I should even try.

Bill