Views - Filters - weird scenario
It's funny how some times after you ask someone or a community for some solution you actually see the problem more clearly.

I was able to complete all of the mentioned tasks and I will summarize here just in case someone bizarrely stumbles upon a similar scenario in the future - although I really doubt it.

So, the views linking to each other dynamically was accomplished using the [tid] argument from the URL and passing it accordingly:

&lt;a href="/Cakes/AllCakes/&lt;?php echo arg(2);?&gt;"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href="/Cakes/AllCakesList/&lt;?php echo arg(2);?&gt;"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;


The jump menu itself is set to Link to the thumbnail view by default unless the url is that of the 'catalogue' view. If so, via theming:

&lt;?php if (arg(1) == 'AllCakesList'){
  $output=  str_replace("/AllCakes/" , "/AllCakesList/",$output);
}?&gt;
&lt;?php print $output; ?&gt;


It leads to the 'catalogue' view.

And if the user is on none of those pages, the jump menu will lead him to the thumbnail view thus also fulfilling the 4th task in my question. That's all folks, sorry for the monstrous post!