Being alive and dead at the same time - Why are some animal activists outraged by Schroedinger's cat experiment?

Schrödinger’s cat, often described as a paradox, is a thought experiment devised by Erwin Schrödinger. It attempts to illustrate what he saw as the problems of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics when it is applied beyond just atomic or subatomic systems. The concept of superposition, one of the strangest in quantum mechanics, helped provoke Schrödinger’s conjecture. Broadly stated, the superposition is the combination of all the possible positions of a subatomic particle.

Some argue the cat would surely know if it was alive. But maybe the observer cannot know, not just a case of knowing the cat must be either alive or dead. Nature does not work like that. Experiments with quantum superpositions indicate that to an observer the contents of the box are undetermined. Only one possibility can be observed when the box is opened, but before that happens all possibilities must exist in some way. On the other hand, wouldn’t the cat count as an observer, thus collapsing the uncertainty wave or either decidedly dooming or saving him/herself (depending on which theories you believe describe the underlying nature of this phenomena)? Though, of course, for particles this wouldn’t apply, though who knows if there’s some vague, curious sentience to subatomic particles?

A cat could be dead in one universe and alive in another universe; however, it cannot be both dead and alive in the same universe, as that would constitute a logical impossibility. The above statement depends upon the correctness of many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics. Yet we have to realize that quantum mechanics does not say the cat is alive and dead at the same time. It’s state (to a potential observer) is described mathematically as a combination of possible states. Until the cat is observed none of those states or possibilities are real.