Note that Schrödinger's thought experiment is intended to ridicule this way of thinking. Schrödinger is trying to suggest that since it's clearly nonsensical to imagine that maybe a whole cat can be both dead and alive the same would be true for other macroscopic subjects.

Instead popular culture has decided that at best, this is what Schrödinger believed (Ha those crazy scientists) and at worst that somehow the cats being dead and not-dead at the same time is the core idea of quantum physics :/

Writing software for a long time really changes your perspective on things. It no longer seems weird that "the" cat is both alive and dead. It's just compression between two universes and until we open the box our perspective is the same.

> and at worst that somehow the cats being dead and not-dead at the same time is the core idea of quantum physics

Yet people are keeping larger and larger objects in a coherent state. Probably nobody will ever do it with a cat, but quantum physics is keeping its tradition of taking anything people think as absurd and saying "well, not really, look at this".

you're right thanks! Updated :)