Many To Many Relationship - What's Best Way To Add/edit/delete

I have a many to many relationship

I can design the table 2 ways:

1) Category table (cat_id, cat_name, active) - cat_id as PK
CategoryReq (cat_id, req_name) - cat_id & req_name as PK

2)
CategoryReq (req_name, cat_name) - req_name & cat_name as PK

If
I design 1st way. Then when they want to add and delete from the
CategoryRequest table, they would have to add to the category table
first. Then maybe build a list of checkboxes to select from. The one's
they check insert into the CategoryRequest table.

Drawback of
this is that they can't edit the list on the fly. Since it may be used
by other request (since cat_id CategoryReq is fk into Category table)

If I design it the 2nd way. Then they can edit, delete, add on the fly. But there won't be a master category list.

Which way is better?