Eloquent ORM, how to link many-to-many tables?

Question

Laravel

Good afternoon!
There is an Ability model, a method

categories(){
return $this->belongsToMany(
'App\Category', 'ability_category', 'ability_id', 'category_id'
);}

Category model, method

abilities(){
return $this->belongsToMany(
'App\Ability', 'ability_category', 'category_id', 'ability_id'
);}

Accordingly, in addition to the categories and abilities tables, there is a joining table ability_category with fields 'ability_id', 'category_id'.
When trying to "reach out" to the title field (for example) of the categories table through the Ability ($ability->categories->title) model, it gives an error that it (the field) does not exist.
What am I doing wrong or where did I misunderstand the manual? I have re-read it dozens of times)
Thank you very much!

Answer 1

Relationship BelongsToMany Always returns a collection of objects. Therefore, to select a field, you need to refer to an element of this collection.

Answer 2

The task was resolved. The error was mainly in the fact that I incorrectly passed the array, respectively, it was not displayed. Thank you all for your input, your advice helped me a lot!