The cat is just an analogy to represent the effect of a photons 'choice' or lack there of on weather it is reflected or transmitted....the observation of the cat is just a physicists humorous representation of observing which route the photon takes....
To suggest the box can observe the cat is fallacy, how can we know the box has observed the cat, without observing the box, until we observe the box every possibility still exists, even the possibility that the Box doesn't exist at all.....
The moon problem is an interesting discussion point, we can directly observe the photons that reflect, or indeed the ir photons that are emitted from the moon. We can turn away but we have still observed the moon, so we know it was there, but now we are not observing it, it could change, it could explode, it could suddenly become luminous green, but we have already observed, the wave function if you like Has already broken down, when we turn away, the wave function of possibilities expands outwards again until we observe it again

This may have been true in 20s etc but not anymore. If Shors algorithm works (as most physicists assume) complex amplitudes (the L2 norm and not some other) must really be physical and not just human book keeping of things we can't directly observe.

People have always wanted/hoped that quantum mechanics was just an accounting trick (literally from Einstein and Heisenberg at the start...... to Feynman diagrams which really are just a book keeping device) but i don't see that as a tenable view now.