As far as my understanding goes, slots don't disappear anymore, so you can get rid of one pet and you'll have a slot to fill.
You can also go to the millionaire centre and buy additional pet slots for sP. I believe the first is 20mil sP, the next would be 40mil sP... I believe you can buy a total of 5 slots from there for an increase of 20mil sP each time. Seems like a lot but if you take into consideration that to buy 2k CSC in user shops it's about 100mil sP.
I know it's already been answered but in short, gold accounts and pet slots have nothing to do with each other now; you used to get 5 slots for activating a gold account, but now everyone just gets the 5 extra regardless. c: It's great, you could give yourself like 50 pet slots with no gold account, then abandon all 50 pets and still have 50 slots.