My cat will lock in on that stuff if you do it just once! I have to be really careful not to feed her early even if she's being a pain about it, because if she gets fed ten minutes early once, that's the new time forever lol.
One time she was being bonkers at 5am so I gave her some treats to keep the peace, it took about 2 weeks to get her out of the "I get treats at 5am every day now" mode.