My second session trying out #meow did not go well. However I found out something important.
Unlike #evil meow uses the built-in #emacs keybindings in its implementation (instead of binding to commands). So if I rebind C-b and C-f, then h and l don't work as expected but now move up and down by a page.
There's actually a note about it in the sources, and there's apparently a reason, but now I have to find new keybindings for anything that collides with emacs built-in keybindings. So that includes a number of #vim bindings that I'd rather have than the built-in bindings.
Oh well, I guess I'll have to adapt more than expected to use meow.