When you execute some queries on your SQL Server, are you sure the catalog is being imported?

With this simple script you can know which is the Index status.

DECLARE @CatalogName VARCHAR(MAX)
SET     @CatalogName = 'TEST_FullIndex'

SELECT FULLTEXTCATALOGPROPERTY(@CatalogName,'ItemCount') as NumberOfItems, 
	   FULLTEXTCATALOGPROPERTY(@CatalogName,'ImportStatus') as ImportStatus,
	   DATEADD(ss, FULLTEXTCATALOGPROPERTY(@CatalogName,
                     'PopulateCompletionAge'), '1/1/1990') AS LastPopulated,
    (SELECT CASE FULLTEXTCATALOGPROPERTY(@CatalogName,'PopulateStatus')
        WHEN 0 THEN 'Idle'
        WHEN 1 THEN 'Full Population In Progress'
        WHEN 2 THEN 'Paused'
        WHEN 3 THEN 'Throttled'
        WHEN 4 THEN 'Recovering'
        WHEN 5 THEN 'Shutdown'
        WHEN 6 THEN 'Incremental Population In Progress'
        WHEN 7 THEN 'Building Index'
        WHEN 8 THEN 'Disk Full.  Paused'
        WHEN 9 THEN 'Change Tracking' END) AS Status
FROM sys.fulltext_catalogs AS cat

More information about the status or other property on Microsoft https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190370.aspx