Second set of DB-driven category pages / category template

[xioup]

We'd like to set up a second, parallel category template that would draw its content from the DB, just like the main category template does.

 

So, imagine I have the following:

example.com/1-my-category

example.com/2-another-category

 

We'd like to have a second template at a second URL root that would show the same categories, something like this:

example.com/cat-1-my-category

example.com/cat-2-another-category

 

The second set of category pages would need to be cached, just like the first set is.

 

I'm envisioning a solution that involves creating a custom controller that extends the Category controller. We'd also need to add rules to .htaccess that would route the second set of category pages to the correct controller. Because of that, we'd need some kind of unique identifier in the URL that we could use to pick out URLs that should point to the second category controller.

 

Does this sound like a major pain to implement? Seem like there'd be a better way to do something like this?