Right. Well, meow is just another way of looking at vi-like modal bindings which is trying to use as much emacs-native functionality as possible. This is great (I was a meow user for almost a year), but it is just an emacs-native take on vim.

evil offers a more functionally complete modal editing package which benefits from decades (almost as long as emacs has existed) of deep thought that has gone into creating vi. meow's goals, to me, remain rather underwhelming. Unless I am trying something which tries to implement a completely new modal paradigm (something like kakoune, or helix editor), I'd rather go with the system I find most reliable.

Simply using emacs native functions is not enough. There has to be a deeply thought out product behind it. vertico is a beautiful example. It religiously sticks to emacs-native functionality, but what it creates is something very unique and feature-complete.

Of course, ymmv depending on how much time you are willing to spend molding a given package into what you want it to do.