This shows how much I don’t use Twitter, but I was curious to verify this and learned I need to sign in (or in my case create an account) to search…is that true?

I believe it is now. Search used to work without being signed in, but I'm pretty sure that changed at some point in the post-Elon era.

Couldn’t verify?

https://twitter.com/search?q=%20Cats&src=typed_query

from the parent comment:

> It was later fixed for ‘cats’, but it took a while.

Argh thanks

Not your fault, I had an edit that I’d forgotten to submit but sent a few minutes later when I remembered. I didn’t see you’d replied to me already, my apologies.

Did you read the entirety of the comment you're responding to, or only the first third of it?

No, it was my fault. I edited it and forgot to submit it till a few minutes later. I didn’t see the responses before I did.