Do a manual join. You can use this to do an actual inner join (contain will act as a left join). http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models/associations-linking-models-together.html#joining-tables
$this->find('all',
array(
'conditions' => array(
'active' => 1,
),
'joins' => array(
array(
'table' => 'user_categories_link',
'alias' => 'UserCategoriesLink',
'type' => 'inner',
'conditions' => array(
'UserCategoriesLink.user_id = User.id'
),
),
array(
'table' => 'user_categories',
'alias' => 'UserCategories',
'type' => 'inner',
'conditions' => array(
'UserCategories.id = UserCategoriesLink.category_id',
'UserCategories.category_name' => $category,
'UserCategories.category_subcategory' => $subcategory,
),
)
),
)
);