int.TryParse = null if not numeric?

First of all, why are you trying to parse a string to an int and stick the result back into a string?

The method signature is

bool int.TryParse(string, out int)

so you have to give a variable of type int as second argument. This also means that you won't get null if parsing fails, instead the method will simply return false. But you can easily piece that together:

int? TryParse2(string s) {
    int i;
    if (!int.TryParse(s, out i)) {
        return null;
    } else {
        return i;
    }
}

Here's a proper use of Int32.TryParse:

int? value;
int dummy;
if(Int32.TryParse(categoryID, out dummy)) {
    value = dummy;
}
else {
    value = null;
}
return value;