Lightroom will not accept caches on different drives for multiple catalogs on different drives

Question

I have three catalogs:  one for my work files, one for botanical pictures (>200,000 pictures on a network drive) and one for everything else (about 90,000 pics). (i have been forced into this because the keyword files for each set are very large and interfere with the keyword files for the other files.)   Lightroom has become very slow, so  I keep the catalogs on different drives, some ssd, some not.  I read that you should keep the cache with the catalog.  so i changed my preferences to do this.  but lightroom insists on using the last cache.  so if i switch to my work catalog from my botanical catalog, Lightroom still uses the botanical cache.  is there any way to fix this?
(I believe i am using lightroom 64 bit but the title bar only shows lightroom.)
system info
Lightroom version: 5.4 [955652]
Operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate Edition
Version: 6.1 [7601]
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 32
Processor speed: 2.2 GHz
Built-in memory: 32751.1 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 32751.1 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 774.7 MB (2.3%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 732.9 MB
Memory cache size: 117.9 MB
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 32
System DPI setting: 120 DPI
Desktop composition enabled: Yes
Displays: 1) 1920x1200, 2) 1920x1200
Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.4
Library Path: D:\LRcat not plants\Lightroom 5 Catalog.lrcat
Settings Folder: I:\Users\rchannon\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom
Installed Plugins:
1) Canon Tether Plugin
2) Facebook
3) Flickr
4) rc Reportamus
Config.lua flags: None
Adapter #1: Vendor : 1002
    Device : 6718
    Subsystem : e182174b
    Revision : 0
    Video Memory : 2006

Answer 1

nahcr wrote:
I read that you should keep the cache with the catalog.  so i changed my preferences to do this.  but lightroom insists on using the last cache.
What cache are you talking about? which preference?
I mean, the only "true" caches I know of are:
ACR cache, whose location is fixed, and
Preview cache, which is *always* with the catalog (unless you go out of your way to link to another drive).
(there is also a "negative" cache, but it's not really exposed to the normal user..).
So, I'm assuming you are talking about the preference to keep presets with catalog, no? But then it still isn't clear what the problem/issue is, or what is the observation about cache usage: "lightroom insists on using the last cache" - what does that mean, how have you concluded it, what did you see?...
You're not confusing presets with a cache are you?
Is this the preference you're talking about?