patch attached against 0.2.4.2-r1; rough stats follow;

full cold cache

[ Searching for file(s) /usr/bin/equery in *... ]
app-portage/gentoolkit-0.2.4.2-r1 (/usr/bin/equery)

real    0m10.320s
user    0m0.733s
sys     0m0.162s

[ Searching for file(s) /usr/bin/equery in app-portage... ]
app-portage/gentoolkit-0.2.4.2-r1 (/usr/bin/equery)

real    0m8.512s
user    0m0.315s
sys     0m0.124s

That particular cold cache is a *full* cold cache; not the best test 
imo since most users have at least some chunks of portage 
configuration/python cached.


Cold cache, with equery --help primer to warm the cache; CONTENTS 
(what belongs operates on) is still out of the cache however making 
this a bit more likely use scenario.

[ Searching for file(s) /usr/bin/equery in *... ]
app-portage/gentoolkit-0.2.4.2-r1 (/usr/bin/equery)

real    0m2.335s
user    0m0.670s
sys     0m0.050s

[ Searching for file(s) /usr/bin/equery in app-portage... ]
app-portage/gentoolkit-0.2.4.2-r1 (/usr/bin/equery)

real    0m0.391s
user    0m0.248s
sys     0m0.046s

Pretty heavy difference, no?


hotcache:
[ Searching for file(s) /usr/bin/equery in *... ]
app-portage/gentoolkit-0.2.4.2-r1 (/usr/bin/equery)

real    0m0.710s
user    0m0.661s
sys     0m0.047s

[ Searching for file(s) /usr/bin/equery in app-portage... ]
app-portage/gentoolkit-0.2.4.2-r1 (/usr/bin/equery)

real    0m0.291s
user    0m0.237s
sys     0m0.053s


Mind you this isn't multiple runs, so the numbers are rough 
approximations- that said they're fairly representative.

Strongly suggest y'all keep category support (although I'll keep on 
using pquery instead ;).

Cheers,
~harring