Frantic panic and/or alarm a cat displays when the vacuum cleaner, sweeper, or other loud appliances made an appearance is called catvoom.
In example, “Quinn displayed intense catvoom, alerting to the sound of the door opening where the vacuum is kept and snaking to an exit an instant later.”
Michael Seidel, writer 
My cats have no fear of the vacuum cleaner. Some of them calmly exit the room while the vacuum is running, and some of them just sit on furniture so as not to be on the floor.
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Quinn is the only one of the current group that manifests this fear. The others do as you note with your cats and just stay out of the way or perch above the fray. We had one cat, long ago, who faced off against the cleaner, arching his back and swatting at it before retreating.
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often with a puffed out tail
unless trying to quickly slink out of the room
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No time for a puffed out tail for Quinn. The others are mellow about it, but not him.
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