Cats Becoming CRAZY from Wet Food

So I recently switched my cats over to a wet food only diet. Our older cat, Anya, has been on this diet before and had the same problem I'm about to describe. The issue is that her behavior becomes absolutely intolerable. We feed them three times a day and most of the time she doesn't even finish all of hers in one sitting so I've even tried giving her less more often. She wakes us up at 4 am meowing nonstop for the food. She also wakes us up if we nap throughout the day because she wants it. She will scratch at anything she can and harass us if we even leave the bedroom. I never feed her when she acts like this, but if I wait awhile until she's stopped and do feed her, she sometimes won't even touch it. In the past this was because she wanted a different flavor of wet food. Now our other cat Alexei, the one who desperately needs to stay on a wet food diet, has been picking up on her behavior. He too will start meowing after she's been at it for about an hour (she will seriously sit and meow for about four hours over it). Now he's started stalking the kitchen, ripping open bags of bread and anything he can get his hands on even though it's not the food he wants to eat! They are tearing up furniture and clothing over this! Like I said, I never give in when they're being demanding because I don't want to reinforce this behavior. Alexei has also started becoming violent when I do go to get the wet food ready for them - he will claw the back of my legs over it. I have not had a good night's sleep in over a week because they keep freaking out, and I'm at my wit's end. Does anyone have any advice for how to deal with this situation? I feed them Fancy Feast classic canned food, and it has really helped Alexei's stool become more solid instead of the half solid half liquid state it was in when we only fed him dry food. I am wondering if I need to try a mixture of wet and dry food for them instead of wet food only.

You may have "trained" her to wake you up for food if you've given in to her demands.  It's hard, but you have to ignore her and only give her food at set mealtimes.  And make sure that those meals don't happen right after you get up - e.g. in the morning, do some stuff first like shower or make coffee, THEN feed your cats.  It'll be painful for two weeks or so and then she'll get the idea.

I don't give in to her demands though - I just lie in bed for hours trying to get to sleep. I don't feed her until about 30 minutes after I've waken up and taken care of my own stuff. I feed them both three times a day at set times unless they're yowling at me at those times. Then I wait until about 30 minutes after they've stopped meowing at me to feed them. So basically I have to bump back their mealtimes too if they're freaking out at me at those set times because I refuse to give in.

I'm thinking the issue is the Fancy Feast. They act like it's crack. They spend hours fiending for it, and Anya will worry about her next "fix" even though often when I give it to her, she won't eat it. It's as if she just feels better that it's there but then it will sit and get gross.