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Mcrowder,
The difference between a foul tip and a missed strike 3 is that a foul tip is a batted ball and therefore it is no longer a pitch. By rights, the batter should be out if the catcher catches a foul tip since it is a batter ball caught in flight; however the rules makers decided that this was unfair to the batter since the catcher normally did not have to do anything unusual to catch the ball, so instead they ruled it simply a strike if the catcher caught the ball and a foul ball if she did not, By your login, a ball that bounces and then is tipped by the batter and caught by the catcher should be a foul ball, rather than a U3K since the foul tip was not "caught".
BTW, it is the same logic as the bolded statement above that is used to call a batter out if the catcher does have to do something unusual (like jump up or make a lunge) to catch the ball, because it is considered a batted ball caught in-flight.
So ultimately it is the change in status of the ball, from a pitch to a batted ball that is the deciding factor on a foul tip vs. an U3K on the pitch that bounces.
SamC
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