I will drop suggestions of there being two cuddle cats but I am still sticking to the idea that the check in Villa with cadaver dogs was a ruse to force a confession out of Kate by shocking her.
Examination of the reason (for the inspection in the villa) is certainly one worth examination.
The first point to note is that Madeleine never lived there.
The second is that clothing examined (several months after Madeleine was abducted) was not kept in some special storage awaiting inspection. It was in common circulation as clothing is: worn, washed, packed in suitcases, folded away on wardrobe shelves (etc,)
What was the purpose of any inspection?
Remember that any (uncorroborated) reaction (of a cadaver dog) is worthless as evidence (no reflection on the dog; just the position in English law). So what were they looking for?
Minute traces of Madeleine's blood would have been meaningless; plenty of innocent explanations of how it might have got there; while deposits in quantities visible to the naked
human eye would obviously not have required a dog to find them.
Yet the clothing was inspected.
Why?
And (exactly the same clothing!),
not reacted to in the villa, was then transported in bog-standard cardboard boxes (with zero regard to principles of cross-contamination;
not that that mattered) to a different premises for a
second inspection in the gym.
Again, why?
I don't think there's too much doubt as to the answer.
Oh, and cuddlecat?
I don't think it was ever in the script that the toy should have been, specifically, the subject of inspection, perched on a stand from which Eddie knocked it off (entirely unscripted).
From there, Grime kind of made it up as he went along.
