GetCategoryInfo returning an empty list

Having Some difficulty using the Shopping API GetCategoryInfo call with python

I've tried two methods so far, the first being straight from the doc's url format;

api_key "my_actual_id"
cat_id = -1
app = f"appid={api_key}&"
call_values = "callname=GetCategoryInfo&"
more_values = "version=967&siteid=0&"
category = f"CategoryID={cat_id}&"
base_url = "https://open.api.ebay.com/Shopping?"

r = requests.get(f"{base_url}{call_values}{app}{more_values}{category}IncludeSelector=ShippingCosts")

This gives me an output of

[ ]

I went over to the api explorer to run some tests and i was able to successfully make a request using the headers provided. I attempted to recreate the code in pycharm;

cat_id = -1
headers = {
    'X-EBAY-API-APP-ID': api_key,
    'X-EBAY-API-SITE-ID': '0',
    'X-EBAY-API-CALL-NAME': 'GetCategoryInfo',
    'X-EBAY-API-VERSION': '967',
    'X-EBAY-API-REQUEST-ENCODING': 'xml',
    "CategoryID": f"{cat_id}"
}
params = {"CategoryID": f"{cat_id}"}
r = requests.get(f"{base_url}",headers=headers, params=params)

this also returned an empty list. I suspect that the request isn't even reaching the url because when i pass in a bad appid or Oauth token i get no errors. If someone could help me figure this out i'd really appreciate it

(there's nothing wrong with my appid as i'm able to make calls with finding and other shopping api calls)