An automatic feeder is worth having. It seems to decouple the food from the owner in the cat's mind, so that if they're hungry, they go sit by the feeder instead of complaining to you.
We always just kept our cats' bowls full of dry food all the time. Unlike dogs, most cats won't keep eating until they make themselves sick, even though they may get chubby.
That has always been my experience (lifetime cat owner), but I’ve also seen friends/family whose cats need to be fed “meals” because they devour everything that’s set out for them immediately.
Then again, we have two kids and basically from birth (ok, from weaning) one we need to coax to eat more and the other appears to have a defective float switch that never seems to trigger...
We got 2 cats who were brothers—littermates—from a friend of a friend, who owned the mother and took very good care of all the kittens until they adopted out most of them.
One of the two brothers is obsessed with food, and would cheerfully eat himself up to bowling ball proportions if we let him.
The other would, if permitted, be a very happy "graze when it suits him" cat. Alas, given his brother's propensities, this is not possible.
At least feeding him in a little ball with adjustable holes means he no longer regularly wolfs his food so fast he throws up...
I feed my cats at a random time between 7am and 10am (between 7 and 7:30 during the work week, between 8 and 10 on the weekend). They never bother me in the morning on the weekend, and on the rare occasion they do they usually want to play. I think the randomness has helped, especially the extreme variability of the weekend.
I have my cat trained to expect a phone alarm for breakfast time. Total accident at first. It was my wake-up alarm, but I started always walking up before it, and then it was the "owner's awake and over here" signal. Any meowing before it gets a strong tone at first and a spritz if continued. Now that I'm working from home, I'll also start using an alarm for dinner.
I had tried to teach her to read an analog clock by putting it near her food dish. No change in behavior except she kept knocking it over.
My previous cat was like yours, though. She didn't expect meals at usual times on weekends. We can train them somewhat, but they do have unique personalities.
