previous_posts_link shows non-existent page link

What I have is a category “A” which contains sub-categories “x”, “y” and “z”. “A” has 8 posts, each of which also belongs to one of the xyz sub-categories. There are several other categoies and several other posts in other categories. The weblog is set to show at most 10 posts.

Now when I go to the category archive for “A”, it shows all 8 posts, but then previous_posts_link also gives the link to the non-existent page 2. (That link then results in a 404 error. Not pretty.)

The reason I have posts under “A” set up this way is because all those belonging to “A” will, without exception, each belong to one of “x”, “y” or “z”. So if I only have those posts belonging to xyz, then the category link for “A” won’t show up on my category list (and will have a post count of 0…somehow counter-intuitive).

Any ideas about this? Perhaps I’m working against the system this way?