Hi Squash0,

you may possibly be able to use MetaMod for this. The first thing to find out is how MetaMod will detect the category that you are viewing.

I suggest that you create a MetaMod and assign it to ALL pages (and a valid module position) then turn on advanced debug mode inside the MetaMod. Then view some of the category and item pages inside that category. Look at what the MetaMod displays on the front end. It will spit out some PHP code for detecting what page it's currently on. If you're lucky one of the parameters available may include the category id. It's very likely you'll see a category id when you are viewing a category page, but a little less likely you'll see it when viewing an item page (though possible, here's hoping).

If you want to paste the output from that into a forum reply, then I'll take a look at it too and see if I can make sense of it for you.

Best regards,
Stephen