I'm only using the -r option in development, but was initially alarmed at the possible prospect of similar behaviour in production, until I realized that Catalyst would never have become popular with that kind of instability so that the fault had to lie elsewhere (probably in my vicinity).

Setting up a script to repeatedly submit an incorrectly completed registration page to Catalyst running without -r option for my reassurance.

It seems like I was not following good practice, so will try an alternative way of achieving the same end.

Thanks