Wordpress - get parent category

I've had an issue where get_the_category() didn't seem to work right for me. To fix this I used get_query_var('cat'), false and with that I used get_category_parents. I created an array and checked for the forward slash and divide the string into that array, with array_filter(explode('/', parents)) otherwise if there are no forward slashes, assign the string to the array. I then counted the array, if it is one(in case there is only one parent), the parent equals the first in the array, else (if there are 2 or more levels of category), use the count and minus 2, to get the 2nd last (parent above) the current category. With that information I got the id. // get the current category parents $realparents = get_category_parents(get_query_var('cat'), false); // could be something like kids/clothing/woman's // create empty array $realparents_array = array(); // create variable for final parent $finalparent = ''; if (strpos($realparents, '/') !== false) { $realparents_array = array_filter(explode('/', $realparents)); } else { $realparents_array[0] = $realparents; } $i = count($realparents_array); // if 1, echo out [0] array, else echo // 2nd last array if ($i == 1) { $finalparent = $realparents_array[0]; } else { $finalparent = $realparents_array[$i-2]; // get } $finalparentid = get_category_id($finalparent);