Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you may be placing special importance on the cat as a measuring device because it is conscious (at least until poisoned). I

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you may be placing special importance on the cat as a measuring device because it is conscious (at least until poisoned). If we assumed that consciousness has nothing to do with measurement, and that two particles interacting is enough for decoherence of one particle relative to another, the cat isn't a measuring device any more than the many constituent atoms in a bucky ball are. If a bucky ball can be in a state of coherence, why not a cat? I know Schrödinger meant for his thought experiment to be obviously absurd, but I think he may have been underestimating the absurdity of the universe and thus accidentally proposing an entirely possible contraption that could not be feasibly built in his own time.