I figured it out at last! Turned out that the MAT pose had grabbed some other texture called "Black.jpg". Out of frustration I renamed the one in the MilCat folder to "MilCat Black.jpg" and reloaded and now all is fine. Just another point why file naming should be done carfully! Things like 'shoes.jpg' or 'red.jpg' just don't cut it...unless you only have a few files to deal with ;