Well..Amos & Joe....there IS a difference between 'refresh' and 'reload'....though the difference will vary from person to person...or from browser to browser, depending on settings...
If you are in Mudcat (well, if *I* am in Mudcat, anyway), and I go to "messages since last visit", as an example, I might see a post from someone I want to check on...and at the same time, I might see at the top that I have a new PM (the # has changed)....well, says I, I will go look at that post, then check the PM. So I click on the post- which takes me to the thread, and I read the post...then I hit 'back', and return to the messages since last visit. Now....instead of resetting "messages since last visit", I hit the "forum home" button at the top. LO! The number of PMs shown is still what it was BEFORE. I have to refresh to see the new PM.
   This is a clue..the PM numbers are reflected in the act of accessing the MSLV page, but the cached page is still the same when I return to the forum!

Now...in my usual browser, Opera, I have a menu like this....The two selections at the bottom "check documents" & "check images" have options varying from 'every 5 minutes' to 'once a week'. Mine is set at 'every 24 hours', thus if I unset my cookie at noon, and then try to REset it at 1PM, when I return to the forum at 1:01PM, the forum will still show the cached page, and may not show that I have reset the cookie until I RELOAD the forum. Re-FRESHING will get me new posts, but NOT all the settings involved in PMs and cookies.

I fought this several years ago, and Jeff & I went 'round & 'round until we figgered it all out.

Briefly...refreshing using the button on the page only changes the listing of threads and new PMs received (if any), and does NOT necessarily affect the page saved in your browser cache)[and on the Mudcat server!]...reLOADING from the browser button overrides whatever setting you may have for the entire site settings to be reset, and puts a new page in your cache.
   This is also part of the issue when a post fails to 'take' and you grumble about retyping it. *IF* you go 'back', copy the post to the clipboard, and reLOAD Mudcat, you can repaste the post and it will 'take' fine..

Now, perhaps someone can phrase all that more clearly than I and explicate the technical reasons better...but there really is a difference between refresh & reload...reloading puts a new page in the cache, while refreshing does not, unless you have set the option to 'always' in the preferences menu, which means the browser will check for new settings every time you post....which one does not usually do, as it takes longer.