One solution to some of the "problems" mentioned here is to not let your cat sleep in your bedroom
(I instigated that rule from day one, when my cat was still a little kitten).
When she senses that I'm slowly waking up, or she wants to wake me up, she starts purring on the other side of the door (what a nice wake-up alarm!). She rarely meows for food (unless she's extremely hungry), usually waiting for me to fill her bowl. Obviously, I consider myself lucky to have a cat with such good manners, I didn't teach her to behave that way...
When she was a kitten, she used to bring her toys and play right on the other side of the door if she felt I was not getting out of bed fast enough, so that was a little bit more noisy, but she stopped doing that growing up.
I absolutely love cats