Filter by categories

Hi, I was wondering if you had any suggestions as to how I could use the category list to filter results within the page (similar to how the search bar removes unmatched posts).
I've tried using the custom JS (shown below) but it doesn't seem to be working at all so I wondered if there was an easier way?

$('.cat-item a').click(function(e){
//alert('stop here';)
e.preventDefault();
console.log('filter results');
}