In the most widely taught interpretation, the Copenhagen interpretation, the question what state the cat is in before you measure it is just meaningless. You’re not supposed to ask. The same is the case in all interpretations according to which quantum mechanics is a theory about the knowledge we have about a system, and not about the system itself.
In the many-worlds interpretation, in contrast, each possible measurement outcome happens in a separate universe. So, there’s a universe where the cat lives and one where the cat dies. When someone opens the box, that decides which universe they’re in. But for what observations are concerned, the result is exactly the same as in the Copenhagen interpretation.
Pilot wave-theory, which we talked about earlier, says that the cat is really always in only one state, you just don’t know which one it is until you look. The same is the case for spontaneous collapse models. In these models, the collapse of the wave-function is not merely an update when you open the box, but it’s a physical process.
It’s no secret that I myself am signed up to superdeterminism, which means that the measurement outcome is partly determined by the measurement settings. In this case, the cat may start out in a superposition, but by the time you measure it, it has reached the state which you actually observe. So, there is no sudden collapse in superdeterminism, it’s a smooth, deterministic, and local process.
Sabine Hossenfelder, “Schrödinger’s Cat – Still Not Dead” at BackRe(Action)
The cat is not dead as long as people keep talking about him.
See also: Sabine Hossenfelder asks, Do complex numbers exist? The people who don’t think complex numbers really exist would probably not be happy with quantum mechanics being even more non-local without them. But of course, if complex numbers really do exist, then immaterial things really exist. Not a good time to be a hard core materialist.