mySQL Multiple Queries Solution

I'm trying to build a CMS for a website that I'm building and I need to be able to edit the article's that were saved to the database. The problem I'm facing is I have a lot of query statements 1 that's selecting all the articles fields values for my inputs and then another one that's selecting everything from my categories table (For a Select Drop Down with all the categories I have for options), what would be the best way to get all the records from categories and only the record that has the art_id that's = to the one I'm passing through URL.

TABLE CATEGORIES

cat_id  cat_name
1       soccer
2       baseball
3       basketball

TABLE ARTICLES

art_id art_cat_id art_title
1      1          lorem

HTML / PHP

<?php
 $sql_articles = "SELECT art_id, art_cat_id, art_title, cat_id, cat_name
                FROM app_articles LEFT JOIN app_categories
                ON app_articles.art_cat_id = app_categories.cat_id
                WHERE art_id =".$_GET['art_id']; 

$result = query($sql_articles);
if($result===false) {
    echo("query failed");
}
else {
    $row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)              
?>

<form id="articles" action="" method="post">

<input type="text" name="title" value="<?php echo $row['art_title']; ?>">

<select name="category">
    <option value="<?php echo $row['art_cat_id'] ?>" selected="selected">
            <?php echo $row['cat_name'] ?>
    </option>
    <?php
    $sql_categories = "SELECT cat_id, cat_name FROM app_categories";

    $result = query($sql_categories);

    if($result===false) {
            echo("Query Fail");
    }
    else {
        while( $data = mysqli_fetch_array($result)) {
            if ($row['art_cat_id'] == $data['cat_id']) continue;
    ?>     
            <option value="<?php echo $data['cat_id'] ?>">
                    <?php echo $data['cat_name'] ?>
             </option>
    <?php
        }
    }
?>
</select>

<input type="submit" value="Save">
</form>
<?php
    }
?>

I Guess what I'm asking is that is it possible to do a sql statment that will return something like

art_id  art_cat_id  art_title  art_slug  art_company cat_id  cat_name
1       1           lorem      lorem     lorem       1       soccer
                                                     2       baseball
                                                     3       basketball

So I can do this is 1 statement, thanks in advance for anyhelp!