? Possible UTI, cystitis?

[Vintry]

Hi, I need some urgent advice please. My cat has had all these symptoms for the past 3 days:

straining to urinate - I thought at first that she was constipated
peeing very little and today I saw blood in the urine
she keeps going to her litter tray
licking herself - she doesn't seem to be in pain though..but I might be wrong about that. She's more vocal than usual.

I am right to think that if I take her to the vet, they'll just prescribe her antibiotics? If I try to give her more fluids is it possible she will get better without a visit to a vet or is this a dangerous situation and I definitely need to go see a vet asap?

Thank you

 

[Vintry]

I forgot to add that she's diabetic girl. Her diabetes is under control. The reason I have decided to ask for advice here is because I've read a few articles about UTIs where it says that uti is rare and most cats don't need an antibiotic, blockage is also unlikely if cat is not male. She started having these problems after I fed her a can of high carb food to raise her bg. I thought maybe she was constipated after that which never actually happened before. But after 3 days I figured out she's just confused thinking she wants to poo instead of pee.

 

[Bron and Sheba (GA)]

Sheba used to suffer from idiopathic cystitis. She had the symptoms you describe. It is painful for them. I used to give her a medication which I can't remember the name of at the moment. It was good for the lining of the bladder wall.. I used to try and keep a stress free environment, used feliway collars, extra fluids. She had flareups periodically. Often had blood in urine. She had an ultrasound to see nothing else there. Antibiotics did nothing to help,
Here are a couple of links
https://www.avma.org/public/PetCare/Pages/FLUTD.aspx
https://icatcare.org/advice/cat-health/feline-idiopathic-cystitis-fic

 

[Kris & Teasel]

My diabetic had repeated flares of this for years. It all stopped after his FD diagnosis - lots of TLC from me, water added to wet food, etc.

 

[Vintry]

Thank you guys! So after 3 days of nothing changing (and I tried adding water to food and syring feed her water avery 2 hours in hope of flushing out the infection) I did take her to vet. As expected she prescribed antibiotics and some pain relief anti-inflammatory. What worries me is that I have to give her antibiotics for 10 days. Do you reckon I can shorten it to 5 or 7 days? We didn't take urine for testing because she doesn't pee..few drops every now and then which is not enough. And doctor doesn't think it's a kidney problem because cats usually urinate in excess in the beginning which is not our case. So she thinks it might be an infection because my cat is diabetic, hence the antibiotics prescription.