Cat craving attention in mornings

[cuteglasses]

Our lovely 11 year old neutered boy has been with us for nearly two months - settled in really well. However in the last two weeks he's been waking up the whole house by scratching at the top of the stairs, around 5 am particularly outside DD bedroom until we are all awake. He has good and water, clean tray etc. Now we are all awake he's settled down in his bed in my room!
How can I discourage this?

My cat did this (luckily grown out of it) when she wanted to outside for the toilet - she had a litter tray but preferred to go outside

We have a bowl of dry food next to our bedroom door, which removes 95% of the disturbances because they come up to bother us, go "oh, food!" and then forget why they walked upstairs.

Obviously not when it's raining because when it's raining at 4am as a cat it's your responsibility to let your humans know and also to make them open all of the doors downstairs because you know, sometimes it only rains outside the cat flap and not outside the door next to it, and if its still raining outside of all the doors then it's probably worth trying the windows upstairs because sometimes it isn't raining upstairs and they could climb out of that particular window. We have a cat flap, they had food.....

🤣