Has schrodingers cat been tested without hurting animals.
It doesn't matter whether you actually go and check on the atom, though. What matters is whether there's something you could check on.
The elements of the experiment are each well understood and defined, but adding them together you link two incompatible ways of looking at the world. The thought experiment puts it on you to reconcile that.
This makes it the perfect series of academic papers. "Practical Schrodinger's Cat, volume XIV: Still refrained from collapsing the waveform."