Tortoiseshell is a common marking that causes mottled or textured orange-ish reddish patches to show up on the dracovix. The minimum amount that needs to be shown is 5% anywhere on the body. The maximum range in heterozygous and homozygous form is 50% coverage.

Tortoiseshell patches can be broken up and display all sorts of shapes and levels of mottling, as long as they are natural looking patches. Tortoiseshell can look a tiny bit like Brindle in very small amounts as long as bigger flecks of color are mixed in near by. Tortoiseshell cannot be a symmetrical marking, so the Other Side of the import is necessary. Tortoiseshell cannot have large, clean patches of color except on the face, where a large picasso-like patch is allowed.

On cinnamon and fire base coats, Tortoiseshell needs to be a visibly different tone of orange-ish than the base coat.

Tortoiseshell can use hard edges, soft edges, mottled edges, and textured edges and may mix all four styles.