Had a similar experience, tried to switch to Meow twice, it's really nice in most ways.
But I found lack of vim-style repeat and accidental "dropping" the selection to be so unwieldy that I couldn't stick to using it.
Ended up writing an alternative to Meow which addresses the issues I had.
This has also been going in in Libraries in Australia.
Go to the library - toddlers Rush to play on the computer.
I wouldn't mind so much if it was available for those who wanted it but in my experience it tends to be central and noisy - difficult to avoid if that's not what you're after.
This has enough font support to be useful, but doesn't provide scrolling, tabs etc... similar in scope to ST.