For Hibernate 5.2 and above, use CriteriaBuilder as follows
CriteriaBuilder builder = sessionFactory.getCriteriaBuilder();
CriteriaQuery<Cat> query = builder.createQuery(Cat.class);
Root<Cat> rootCat = query.from(Cat.class);
Join<Cat,Mother> joinMother = rootCat.join("mother"); // <-attribute name
Join<Mother,Kind> joinMotherKind = joinMother.join("kind");
query.select(rootCat).orderBy(builder.asc(joinMotherKind.get("value")));
Query<Cat> q = sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().createQuery(query);
List<Cat> cats = q.getResultList();