DickS
I expect you already know this,
my only offering is to put the category on a link in the top menu - you can have the product version set for logged in customers only by checking "Show the menu item for logged in visitors " -
and the informative text version for those NOT logged in by checking "Show the menu item for NOT logged in visitors"
I guess you would like this to be in the left column menu but I can't see a solution for that
Chris