return value of categorical array in uitable- Matlab App Designer

Hi Guys, im just working on a GUI with Matlab App Designer. Ive added some UITables with categorical arrays to have drop menues in my tables. Therefore i defined the cells like "cell = categorical({'on'}, {'on','off'})", to have a default value in the drop down. The issue is that the return value of the cell is "1x1 categorical" when im not changing the default value, but if i made any changes on the drop down i get only a char value from the cell. Why does matlab do this cast operation? Is there a way to get a categorical array for any case?

Best regards