More customizable tables for category module

I'm loving the category module, but I was wondering if there was an easy way to integrate customization of the table of contents. I can had code it in, but I would love to be able to (on a per node basis) say for the table of contents have "x" number of columns and basic tablular edits. Does anyone have any ideas?

So instead of:

Colors
-red
-blue
-gree
-purple
Tastes
-Bitter
-Salty
-Spicy
Comments
-subcomment

You'd have this:

Colors Tastes
-red -Spicy
-blue -Salty
-green -Bitter
-purple