Multiple category sets for blog

I'm trying to set up the blog app so I can have different category sets appear depending on which post template you select. Everything is working correctly except the actual archive listing. I'm guessing this might have something to do with the way the "blog" category set works with the blog, but I'm not sure. I'm using the default category display code from the blog:

if (perch_get('cat')) {

          perch_blog_custom(array(
        'category'   => perch_get('cat'),
        'template'   => $template,
        'count'      => $posts_per_page,
        'sort'       => $sort_by,
        'sort-order' => $sort_order,
        'page-links' => true,
                  ));

          $posts_displayed = true;
      }

My category url looks like /archive.php?cat=category-here