I Think we should keep the answer as simple as the question.
“The question, then: Is Schrödinger’s Cat meant to be taken at all physically?”
No, that experiment, if practiced as described, was a violation of the respect for animal life and so unethical and forbidden by any scientific paradigm.
Second: The Copenhagen Interpretation is in disfavor of the most advanced Theoretical Physicists. There are actually basically four theories respected by the most advanced Physicists and Cosmologists, because, as you know, after admission of Higgins Field, Dark Matter and Dark energy, as well as Quantum Gravity most cosmological questions related to the Standard Model are in a state of suspension. Apparently there is no doubt about the existence of a Universal Wave Function, which came into a central role after solved the so called problem of duality wave-particle, the concept of quantum entanglement, quantum tunneling and the measurement problem.
The Three families of quantum particles plus Higgins bosom are a satisfactory base for Quantum Mechanics.
To answer your question, these are subatomic interactions, and nothing at a macroscopic level has changed much since Newtonian Physics. Bohr-Rutherford model is not object of teaching, and educational systems are incorporating the model of probabilistic orbitals and using concepts as superposition and entanglement.
The Cat is overestimated. Experts talk over and over about the poor animal, but as image, an explanation of the wave function collapse.
It cannot be measured, that way we don’t know about the cat. Opening the Box mean measuring the wave function. While that box is closed there is superposition, so the description of the cat as dead and alive. After you open the box, after the collapse of the wave function, the question is either or, death or alive.
It is practically possible to kill or not a Cat by application of that principle.
Today, there are applications that solve that question by connecting to a remote lab, and you are free to apply the result to your diner or to your investment on funds or futures.
So, IT is not to be taken physically.
Although people say that the author of the proposal, actually was not a cat guy.
Its like the just so Story by Rudyard Kipling about “The Cat That Walked By Himself”
Historically cats have been persecuted.
But that time is over.
in Sci-fi Literature, there is a case, for example, in a series of beautiful Novels By Dan Simmons that began with “Hyperion” and end with “The Rise of Endymion” were the protagonist is closed in a  Schrodinger’s cat little satellite as a form of punishment, in a low orbit awaiting the end in a state of life and death if you follow the Copenhagen Interpretation.
Do not worry, he lived to tell the tale.

P.S
Sir Roger Penrose understand four dimensions, curved spacetime better than anyone.
Penrose Diagrams are the equivalent of Feynman Diagrams for Quantum Mechanics.