Wordpress Themes - WP Forum at BFA - Style & edit center column with sorted posts by category

What I would like to do:

In the center column:

Show the most recent post of category cat1 (show only one post)
Below this post:
Show the most recent 10 posts of category cat2

So the most recent post of category cat 2 will never be the first post.

Approach 1:
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- Settings > Reading > Blog pages show at most 1
- Use the Category Excluder plugin for excluding categories other than cat1
- Create a New Widget Area and use the plugin Category Posts Widget for showing category cat 2 posts.
Problem: Category Excluder also excludes the posts shown by the Category Posts Widget

Approach 2:
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Use the example code from "Style & Edit Center Column > The Loop"

Code:

<?php if ( $bfa_ata['postcount'] == 1 ) { ?>

The HTML, Javascript or PHP that you put here will be displayed after the first post.

<?php } ?>

and insert somewhere an "is_category()" and some PHP code...

Well, I am not a programmer!
Any idea?