Ah, a kindred soul! You didn't vote for him either, right?
If only Eves hadn't been such an idiot...

As you well know, it's ALL driven by environmentally-based legislation and
regulation.

Sorry  that goes out to HTM as well!!!

You can't do it yourself. Unfortunately, it's highly likely you'll have to
get a new cat installed by Midas, Meineke or other place. Their cats will
be good for at least a couple of years, and even with multiple replacements
will still be cheaper than new OEM.

Having said that, there has been the odd report of cracked exhaust
manifolds that have admitted inappropriate oxygen to the exhaust after the
first sensor, so you might want to get that checked. The cracks are around
the sensor hole, according to the reports I've read.

The "canister" has to do with evaporation from the gas tank. Since the '70s
cars have had charcoal-filled canisters to capture gas tank evaporations.
For the 1996 model year, the federal EPA mandated that the canister and its
associated control hardware should be made considerably more efficient and
sensitive. This means that minor errors that would have gone unnoticed
prior to 1996 will now turn on your MIL and make you spend your money to
turn it off again.

And just so everyone knows the scale of this sort of thing:
1) Emissions-wise, North American market cars have been CLEANER than the
ambient air (for measured pollutants) since the late '80s and continue to
be so. This is how the federal EPA can claim that the air is 57% cleaner
that it was in 1970, in spite of a 153% increase in vehicular traffic.
2) A pint of gasoline poured on the ground will emit more hydrocarbons than
a new car will emit (in total!) in 100,000 miles of driving.

Measured and regulated numbers in question today are impossibly tiny, and
yet the various regulatory bodies act as though it were still 1951. About
90% of vehicle emissions reductions were achieved by the mid-'80s.