Getting the value of $cat outside the loop

Hi,

I’m grappling with a bug in the plugin I released about a week ago http://www.davidsaccess.com/2005/03/13/wp-plugin-dcs-nicer-archives/ having to do with getting the category when is_category is true. I need to get the category.

If you look at the default themes, Micheal addressed this by forcing $post to be $posts[0]. This does not work for category because $posts[0] can have multiple cats and single_cat_name may not be the right one.

Any ideas?