1) Trade cats in for dogs. A dog is loyal because it's a dog. A cat is "who cares" because it's a cat. Some of your players will just sit back and ignore your pleadings and some will rise and serve their fellowship. Know which is which and slowly move the cats out. It's not "kicking" them, it's "we've changed and it's not a good match." If you start setting known goals -- like a top 10 finish in the FA, and get the "dogs" to come along, the cats will usually leave on their own as the pressure to keep up grows. Make their move friendly by even finding them fellowships that better suit their needs, even.
2) Go slow and steady. Getting to any worthy goal can be pushed, pushed, pushed, and in the process push even the most loyal dog out the door. Set intermediate goals and give it time. Constant reminders of the goals and what specific things your fs needs to do to get to those goals helps. Our FA previews start about 4 weeks before we are going to do an FA (we only do one or two at "full speed" each year) with specific suggestions of how many CC's to save up, how many instants will be needed, encouragement to delay starting a new chapter and/or finish the one they are in by a certain date, and so on. The more specific, I've found, the more likely they will do it. "Save some CC's" isn't the same as "You'll need at least 200 CC's for the FA, so start saving them now")
3) We do all stage 1 and 2 and a single path through stage 3. Remember, you don't have to finish one color of path, but can move via waypoints 2 and 5 from one color to the other. We did this and saved a lot of effort in the last FA (Finished 7th).
4) Plan ahead and let them know the plan. I have a spreadsheet that let's me try different paths and tells me exactly what path through State 3 is the best (actually it does the same for stage 1 and 2 but we do all of those so we don't really care about that). I let them know how many of each badge we will need to reach our goal (top ten) and then ask them to tell me their plans -- usualy about a week ahead. Based upon that I adjust our goals. Usually I find they exceed what I estimate so that's always a positive. (Which means you need to be conservative in your goal setting as it's always better for the team to exceed a goal than to fall short).
Now there is another approach. You can simply insist all the cats be dogs and if they aren't, kick them. I know a Starfleet officer who seems to do that. She does have a lot of turnover at the beginning from what I can tell, but in the end gets to a certain level faster. But once she reaches that level things level off. My belief is that the underlying method is not healthy as it undermines the trust and puts a lot more unnecessary pressure on the team. But it is effective in getting groups to a certain, high, level. My personality doesn't lend itself to that method.
Hope this helps.
AJ